


Only the Dead Know

by Mimzilla



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Animal Death, Child Death, Child abandonment (mentioned), Dissociation, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Hunter x Hunter Big Bang 2016, Medical Procedures, Original Character Death(s), Original Character(s), Panic Attacks, Psychological Trauma, Unreliable Narrator, the graphic descriptions of violence tag is not a joke there is some brutal stuff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-02
Updated: 2016-06-03
Packaged: 2018-07-11 21:34:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 94,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7071301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mimzilla/pseuds/Mimzilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Struggling to stay alive on the streets does not lend itself well to developing a sense of pride. But if there is anything that Kite has to learn from Ging, it is that wielding a Hunter’s license carries with it a duty to abide by a Hunter’s rules. These tenets are not forgiving to those who make a misstep, but living with his life hinging on his ability to adapt however necessary was never unfamiliar to Kite. And it isn’t as though he’s completely without guidance.</p>
<p>The mark of a successful Hunter is the ability to make one’s prey move as one wants it to.</p>
<p>[Note: the chapters currently posted of this work aren't fully edited as of yet, and I will update it with the final drafts once I have them.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fortune Favors the Brave

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to my amazing, amazing friends owlphallacies and zoldyckstripshow who helped me with this monster! I wouldn't have been able to do it without you.
> 
> This draft of Only the Dead Know is very much not the final draft. Over the next few months I'll be doing some rather extensive editing, and I'll probably aim for getting chapters 1-7 whipped into shape before moving on to writing chapters 8-11. Just letting you know: it's gonna take a while. But I'm excited to post what I have here, and I hope you enjoy it!

 

 

 

“What is that down there?”

The shopkeep, owner and proprietor of Lojarne’s Butchery, craned his neck look at the indicated cement-lined hole that projected out from the hillside, water pouring from it into a small stream. “What, the storm sewer?”

“Is that what it is?”

“Yeah, since that thing was built we’ve had a lot less problems with flooding in the streets. Let me tell you, it is _not_ easy to get to the Sunday farmer’s market when the roads all have water up to your knees, practically, and everybody’s cars are hydroplaning and—“

He rambled on for several minutes. His conversational partner let him and actually listened to what he had to say, not tuning out or trying to hide disinterest. Lojarne, sensing that his audience was genuine for once, puffed out his chest a bit. “—but for all the good it does,” he said, “it tends to attract the gutter muck. Most of them only stay for a bit, maybe a few weeks. I guess it’s better than having them laying on the sidewalks everywhere.”

“How do they live in there?”

“Hell if I know.” He shrugged, turning back to cleaning his store windows. “And hell if I care. I’d be a damn sight more sympathetic if they didn’t keep stealing from me. I swear, at least once a fortnight—probably more than that, if I’m honest—there’s this knot eater who keeps taking my best cuts of meat, I could get good money for those! It really makes me mad to think of quality beef like that getting thrown to mutts in the sewers.”

“What do you mean?”

“Ah, there’s a bunch of strays down there too. They’ll be the ones eating it, unless he’s feral enough to stomach raw meat.” He laughed derisively. “I wouldn’t be surprised. Never heard him talk, doubt he can. Lord, I’d rather let my best cuts rot than know he’s gotten his grubby paws on them. But, well, the gutter muck can’t survive forever.”

The butcher looked more than satisfied at the idea, buffing the glass over his shop’s insignia until it gleamed. “Yep, he’ll get what’s coming to him.”

 

\--

 

It wasn’t anything more than an idle curiosity that led Ging into the storm sewer. There was a small walkway on one side, tall enough that it was dry while water churned below. It wouldn’t be high enough to handle a real storm, like Ecinev got in the wet season; the rainfall in those periods would be enough to fill the tunnel up to Ging’s head. If one looked closely, the walls had a ridge partway down that marked where they’d begun to be worn away by the force of the water.

Ging spent a while puzzling out the underground system. There were outlets to the streets, of course, many of them large enough to need mechanized covers. When the roads were well and truly flooded those would open, letting water into the sewer by the gallon so that it could be expelled outside of the city. Even small alleyways had openings, he gathered by poking his head up one of the holes on a back street. A passing garbage collector had a fright seeing him crawling partway out into the drainage ditch and Ging gave them a laughing apology, waving goodbye as he descended again.

Not bad, all things considered, but not the kind of place someone could feasibly live. Ging wandered around under the city, occasionally checking where he was with the map. It was pretty obvious that the people the butcher had taken to be living in the storm sewer were just using it to get around where no one would harangue them. This in mind, Ging directed himself vaguely in the direction of the southern part of the city, where the outlet covers were rusted and looked useless. Some of them were stuck partly open, and if he squinted against the light Ging could catch glimpses of ragged buildings. He’d definitely reached the shanty town, then.

It was only a few minutes before he met a stout dark-skinned woman with a large bag over her shoulder. It was patched up all over and the few pieces of its original cloth left were dull and threadbare. Her clothes, a long heavy coat with a popped-up collar over a plain shirt and jeans, were in a similar state. Her bushy afro was in messy condition, but she looked decently well-fed if scruffy. She stopped walking as soon as she saw him, tensing up and hefting her bag—it would make a decent weapon, probably, if she swung it hard and got somebody in the head. Ging held up his hands and smiled, stopping as well.

“Hi,” he said. “I’m just looking around, I’m not here to steal stuff or anything. I’m passing through town.”

The woman snorted and didn’t relax. “Kyleen,” she yelled over her shoulder, “boot dummy!”  
Ging blinked in confusion as another woman rounded the corner behind the bag-bearing one. Kyleen, presumably. She was a fair bit taller than the other and her hair was cropped close to her scalp. She scowled at him and pulled a knife out of her belt, approaching slowly to the other woman’s side. Here the walkway expanded into a tunnel between two channels so that they could spread out to either side of him as they carefully creeped forward.

Ging kept his hands where they were, his brow furrowing. “Hmmm,” he hummed, oblivious to them. “Oh! Dummy like a mannequin! So then it would be someone who’s ‘displaying’ a pair of boots? Ones you want?” He clapped his hands together, grinning triumphantly. “Nice! That’s one I haven’t heard before.”

Kyleen and the other woman shared a quick, disconcerted glance before Kyleen spoke up. “Well, since we’re all on the same page, hand ‘em over.”

“Nah.” Both women blinked at the nonchalance of Ging’s tone. “I need these! I do a lot of hiking, you know, so a really sturdy pair of boots is important.”

“Oi, it’s not a request,” the bag woman snapped. “D’you think we’re messin’ around?”

“I’m pretty sure these wouldn’t even fit your feet.”

“Fine!” Kyleen snapped. “Have it your way!”

She stepped forward, her footfalls silent. The outline of her body went fuzzy and as she paced in a wide circle she appeared everywhere along her path, all the replicas making the same movements.

“Rhythm Echo?” Ging said, impressed. “I wasn’t expecting to find a technique like that here. How’d you learn it?”

Neither woman responded and Ging sighed. Kyleen’s doubles all bent their knees slightly, bringing their knife hands up. “One last chance,” the bag woman called. “Hand over your fancy stuff and you’ll leave here alive.”

Ging’s smile dropped finally and as Kyleen rocketed forward her knife only found air where he’d been standing. She swore emphatically and spun, scanning the tunnel.

“I’m not gonna let you sell my stuff,” Ging said from behind the bag woman. “C’mon, how about we just talk this out?”

The bag whistled through the air, brushing the tips of his hair as he ducked. When it hit the wall the cement shattered, crumbling to leave a sizable hole, and he whistled. The woman swung it again and Ging sidestepped, coming almost to the edge of the walkway. Kyleen darted forward into a spin kick that nailed him in the chest. Someone else would have been thrown into the water, if not smashed against the opposing wall. As it stood Ging held his ground, though he was winded enough to cough.

Kyleen’s eyes widened and she pushed off against Ging’s chest, flipping through the air to land in a crouch several yards back. When the bag woman stepped forward she held up her hand and spoke with a warning tone. “Nora! Hang on. This guy’s no tourist.”

Nora scowled, her wide nose crinkling up, but backed off. Ging stayed where he was, holding his hands up defensively again. “Can we talk now?” he asked cheerfully. “I could pay you for information or something, if you need money that badly.”

“How much we talking?”

Ging shrugged. “How much do you want?”

“I can’t believe this shit,” Nora growled. “He’s _clearly_ making fun of us.”

Kyleen looked like she was inclined to agree but didn’t act on it. “What information do you want?” she asked warily.

“A map of the storm sewer would be nice. You’ve gotta have one around here somewhere, right? It’s a big city. And a comprehensive one of the shanty town, with all the hideouts and everything.”

Kyleen’s eyes narrowed. “That’s worth a lot more than a pair of boots. Who are you, anyway?”

“My name’s Ging Freecss. I’m a Hunter.” Their eyebrows shot up and Ging could see the thought cross their minds. “Listen, don’t try and steal my license. Just don’t. It’s a bad idea. I’ve got a job in the next town over and I wanted to check out the city a bit, that’s why I’m here.”

A grin tugged at one corner of Nora’s mouth. “Looks like he _is_ a tourist. A fuckin’ weird one, though.”

Ging shrugged again, his smile growing. “Sure, why not.”

Kyleen stood up slowly, staying on guard all the while. “Show us your license, then. Prove it.”

He huffed and dug around in his pockets for it. “Uhh, where’d I put it…? Oh, right, here.” He held the ID up, its double cross shining prominently despite the darkness of the tunnel. “Satisfied?”

Kyleen eyed the license, then nodded and dropped her fighting stance—though even her relaxed stance was poised to fight or flee, Ging noted. Nora dropped her bag with a crash, crossing her arms. “Alright, so you’re a Hunter. But we’re not going to just hand over something like that. You show us the money first.”

“Alright. How much?”

“You realize that giving you map of the town would be the same as selling out everybody living there, right?” Nora drawled. “It’s built convoluted for a reason. A lot of people want to keep hidden.”

“I just want to not get lost,” Ging said. “What about ten million Jenny? That about right?”

Nora and Kyleen looked flabbergasted for a second. Nora recovered first and her tone shifted to one of an experienced bargainer. “Twenty.”

“This place isn’t _that_ big. Thirteen.”

“It’s not about how big it is,” Nora said coolly. “It’s about how the mob bosses are gonna be after our heads for broadcasting their hideouts. Twenty.”

Ging rubbed the back of his head and sighed. “It wouldn’t help to say that I don’t care about them, right? Or that I’m not going to pass the map off to the police? Fifteen.”

“That’s right, _tourist_. If we’re doing this we’re going to need enough cash to get far the hell away from here.”

“What are you going to do?” Ging asked abruptly. “Once you leave.”

“None of your business,” Kyleen cut in sharply. “A map is more than we should give you, you’re not getting anything on us.”

“Aw, c’mon…” He put his hands on his hips and leaned forward, his eyes bright and interested. “If you know where all the hideouts are, you must be pretty involved with those mobs. And connections like that don’t just get put down. How come you’re so ready to sell ‘em out and book it?”

The women glanced at each other, a silent conversation passing between their eyes. “… The money first,” Kyleen said. “Then we can have a nice friendly chat over tea or whatever if that’s what you want. But ‘til then you’re getting nothing.”

Ging looked slightly annoyed for a second at having his questions dodged, but it passed quickly and then he was grinning again. “Okay, okay, twenty million in cash, I’ll go withdraw it. But I’m too curious now to pass up that tea. Where should I meet you?”

“There’s a water tower close to the border of the city and shanty town,” Kyleen said as Nora picked up her bag and they both stepped backwards down the tunnel. “There, in an hour.”

“I’ll bring the tea,” Ging agreed, giving a thumbs-up. His expression faltered slightly as he remembered—“Hey, one more thing, did you two learn _Nen_ from the mob?”

Kyleen raised her eyebrows, lingering as Nora turned the corner and disappeared. “… Yes. Why?”

Ging pointed at the other end of the tunnel with his thumb. “Did they teach the kid who’s been tailing me, too?”

Kyleen’s eyes jerked toward where he was pointing, but the tunnel was empty except for them.

“They’re a block or two back,” Ging said. “But they can definitely hear us. Oop, there they go, they just hightailed it.” He rubbed a hand over his jaw thoughtfully. “Anyway, they can definitely use _Zetsu_ , so I figured you’d know.”

Nora had stepped out from behind the corner when Ging had mentioned the eavesdropping, gripping the handle of her bag so tightly it creaked. “Kyleen,” she hissed, “if they’re going to blab-!”

Kyleen ran her tongue over her lips slowly, a bead of sweat dripping down her face as she thought hard. “This person,” she asked, her voice tense. “Were they alone?”

“There were a couple of dogs with them, two I think.” Ging blinked as both women visibly relaxed and Kyleen wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “You know ‘em?”

“Little ghost,” Kyleen muttered under her breath, then addressed Ging directly. “It’s fine. He’s not going to do anything.”

“How do you know?”

“He doesn’t get mixed up in any of that,” Nora said. “He’s dodged their headhunters more than once, he wouldn’t go crying wolf to them now. Besides, we’ve tossed him an’ his dogs food a couple times, we’re on okay terms.”

“How did he learn _Nen_ , then, if not from you or them?” Ging asked, the curious intensity behind his eyes getting stronger.

Nora shrugged and Kyleen turned to join her by the corner. “Dunno,” she said. “I don’t know much about him, really. He sticks to himself.

“One hour,” she reminded Ging, then she and Nora disappeared past the corner into the darkness of the dim tunnels. Ging strolled away in the opposite direction, listening carefully for the click of dogs’ claws against the concrete, but they were long since gone. Damn. He’d have to look around later, see if he could find this kid.

“Twenty million, Nora?” Kyleen muttered in the distance.

“Listen, the man _opened_ with ten, he clearly doesn’t have to worry about money…”

 

\--

 

The water tower loomed over the shanty town, both because it was tall in itself and because it was positioned at the top of a hill. It was possible to look out on most of the surrounding area from its apex, which Ging promptly did upon arriving early to the meeting spot. There was a no beauty to the city’s slums, the buildings having been constructed with blank, connecting rooftops that made it difficult to judge where one was both from on top of them and from below them. It was easy to get lost, a fact that dismayed most police officers and civilians who attempted to navigate through. It was labyrinthine, accessible only to those who had memorized each alley and trick door that allowed passage into otherwise faceless buildings. It didn’t help that occasional cutouts in the roof couldn’t fully illuminate the streets, so the shanty town lived in almost perpetual darkness.

The expanse of the rooftop was crumbling on the edges of the town, where it was possible to see shoddily constructed houses in messy rows. They appeared to be made entirely of salvaged wood and stray pieces of sheet metal, often too small to contain more than one or two rooms. People came and went, milling about on the streets. Ging squinted, fairly sure he could see some of them bartering with each other.

“Hey tourist,” a voice drawled from the ground, “I hope you’re not expecting us to climb up there.”

Ging leaned over the edge of the tower and grinned at the two women. Kyleen was in the process of extracting a rolled-up piece of paper from her boot and Nora gestured for him to come down. He swung his legs out so that they dangled in the air for a moment before he pushed himself off and plummeted to the ground, his travel cloak billowing up behind him.

When he landed Nora stuck out her hand immediately, palm up and gesturing for the money. Kyleen kept a tight hold on the map, eyeing him warily; Ging could feel her tracking his every move. Her free hand rested on the hilt of one of her many daggers.

“Twenty million,” he said, holding up a briefcase. The classic tool for handing off large sums of money. A pleased smile played across his face. “I’ve always wanted to do something like this, honestly, so thanks for helping me cross it off my bucket list.”

“Something like what?” Nora asked suspiciously, waiting patiently for him to bring the bag to her rather than stepping forward to take it herself.

“Well, making a clandestine exchange with shady characters who clearly don’t operate within the law,” Ging said. “… Would you mind asking me to show you the money?”

Nora looked almost offended, so it was Kyleen who rolled her eyes and said flatly, “Show us the money or you don’t get anything.”

Ging frowned, tapping his fingers on the briefcase handle. “No, it’s just not right if it’s scripted. Oh well, I’ll take what I can get.” He swung the briefcase up onto his arm so that he could hold it there with one hand and open the clasps with the other. Inside were many stacks of Jenny bound with rubber bands, arranged neatly into rows and columns. The map crinkled audibly in Kyleen’s hand as she stiffened at the sight.

“Fine,” Nora said, gesturing for him to hand it over again, maintaining her professionally unruffled expression. “We saw it. Satisfied?”

“There are a few other things I’d like to know, actually. Do you know how that rooftop stays structurally sound? I imagine people would travel across it fairly often. And do you both live there?”

Kyleen’s eyes narrowed, but the money was in Ging’s hands still. Nora glanced in her direction and she spoke carefully. “You’ll have to ask someone else about the roof; people usually don’t walk across it because it’s difficult to get on and off from street level; not anymore.”

Ging had shut the briefcase again and held it loosely in one arm, by all appearances having forgotten it was there. “Where do you live?”

“On the outskirts,” she answered shortly. “And from now on we’ll be in a city far away from this one.”

“Because the underground will be after your heads.”

Kyleen’s lips thinned and after a moment she nodded stiffly.

“So why are you booking it, besides the map?” Neither of them responded and Ging huffed, shifting his hold on the briefcase and letting it drop to his side. “Come on, is it really going to matter? I’m leaving the city in two days tops, so I’m not exactly invested in making connections with criminals in the meantime.”

“That conclusion doesn’t exactly follow from your not being here long,” Kyleen pointed out. “A lot can happen in two days. It doesn’t take long to make connections to anyone.”

“Or break them, apparently.” Ging sighed and held out the briefcase, pausing just before he dropped it into Nora’s hand. “Can I get the cliff notes version?”

“We were in the mob. Now we’re not. You’ve got a lot of money and we want it,” Nora said plainly. “So hand it over and we’ll give you the map and we can all go on our merry ways.”

Once more Ging sighed, but he let the handle fall into Nora’s grasp. “Fine, fine.”

Kyleen tossed the map to him and promptly turned to leave without a word. Nora followed her example before Ging put a hand on her shoulder and she spun around again to smack it away.  
“Hands off the merchandise!” she snapped. “What else do you want, clod sniffer?”

Ging raised his eyebrows, bemused, in a good mood again now that he had the map. “Well, I was going to ask if you actually did want tea, but now I want to know what ‘clod sniffer’ means.”

Nora looked at Kyleen exasperatedly, shaking her head. “I can’t believe this guy.”

“No, we don’t want tea. We’re leaving,” Kyleen answered, annoyance seeping into her tone. She was eyeing the hand Ging had touched Nora with with extreme distaste. “Clod sniffer was originally cloud sniffer, someone with a lot of money and their nose in the air. It changed to clod one way or another. Goodbye.”

She waited until Nora had tromped past her to start walking again. After a few steps she faltered and glanced back at him. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “This money will help us a lot.”

Ging blinked in surprise, then grinned from ear to ear. “A fair trade’s a fair trade. Good luck with everything. Maybe we’ll meet again sometime.”

Kyleen nodded brusquely and walked away, linking her arm with Nora’s free one once she’d caught up.

 

\--

 

The sun was just setting when Ging meandered back to the storm sewer entrance he’d initially begun from; the map had proven to be quite useful for cross-referencing where he was without having to climb up to street level. The sewer was more convoluted than he’d initially thought it to be, a network of passages cutting through the tunnels with a slight slope that would take the water to the farthest edges of the city. Outlets that didn’t go that far—like the one he was approaching at the moment—let out into canals that eventually reached the same destination.

The shanty town map was doubly fascinating for how it was divided into jagged shapes, thick lines partitioning off sections of it from one another and demarcating where the various mob territories began and ended. It would be invaluable to anyone who needed to get around the place without the help of street signs or altruistic bystanders. There would be bystanders, certainly, but altruism was a bit much to hope for.

An echo reached Ging’s ear while he was still some ways away from the outlet, a faint frustrated cry, and as he concentrated harder he could hear rapid footsteps. A dog barked warningly and Ging grinned, picking up his pace so that the sounds gradually grew louder, clearer.

“ _Knot eater!_ ” an old man’s voice reverberated around the corner. “Don’t you run from me, brat, get _back_ here so I can _teach you a damned lesson-!!_ ”

The dogs rounded the corner first, one a dirt-stained golden retriever with patchy fur and the other a ragged pit bull down an eye, each carrying a meat-laden bone in their mouths. They snarled at Ging and darted to their left, making him sidestep into the wall to avoid running into them. A few steps behind them a blur of blue and grey whirled around the bend in an all-out sprint, taking the corner without slowing. The person glanced at him briefly but didn’t seem surprised—the dogs’ growls must have been a sufficient alert. Clutched in their right hand was a brown paper bag, stained with a dark liquid around the bottom. Another stream of profanity echoed through the tunnel and Ging raised his eyebrows, recalling the butcher’s story.

Sure enough, the next person to arrive was the butcher himself, gasping for breath between swear words. “Get what’s coming to you, you little— _Augh-!_ ”

He jerked back after nearly crashing right into Ging and stumbled precariously close to the edge of the walkway. Ging caught his shoulder and steadied him, watching the thief get farther and farther away out of the corner of his eye. “That’s the one you were telling me about, right?”

The butcher gaped at him, his face bright red with anger and exertion. “Uh—yes, it is—”

Ging nodded and pushed off the ground hard enough to crack the concrete, leaving the butcher in the dust and catching up to the thief less than a moment later, grabbing onto his upper arm and halting him in his tracks. The thief made a wordless sound of surprise as his forward momentum suddenly wrenched at his shoulder and he had to half-turn. His free arm, the right, snapped to the side and flung the bag of meat down the tunnel to where the dogs had stopped as well, their hackles raised. The pit bull snatched it up in its mouth along with the bone, its teeth and gums bared as it growled at Ging. The retriever focused on the butcher, who was watching it nervously as he jogged to catch up.

The thief glared up at Ging, trying to pull away fruitlessly. His quite impractically long hair, a dirty shade of grey, was falling across his face and down almost to his waist in an uneven mess. It was difficult to see his face at all, both because of the hair and because he had his shoulders hunched up high enough that his coat’s popped collar partially covered it. But his eyes were bright and darted back and forth between Ging and the butcher, scanning them with an edge of panic. He kept straining to free his arm from Ging’s hold despite having no success at all. Ging thought vaguely that he’d probably have stood a better chance if he wasn’t stick-thin to the point of being gaunt; Ging’s fingers were practically touching his thumb, and he wasn’t even stretching them around the kid’s arm.

“Shit,” the butcher breathed, staring at Ging’s hold on him. “Shit, I can’t believe—how the hell did you move so fast?”

“Training,” Ging answered vaguely, still examining the kid as he redoubled his efforts to get loose. The dogs were pacing forward, their growls lowering in timbre. “You can call them off, right?”

The nameless kid stiffened as he was addressed and examined Ging’s face. He nodded once, a jerky motion that was more of a twitch.

“It’ll be easier for us to talk if you do. I’m not going to hand you over to anybody, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

The butcher spluttered angrily as the kid hesitated, glancing from Ging’s hand to the butcher’s furious scowl.

“I promise,” Ging said quietly.

The kid looked uncertain but turned his face back toward the dogs all the same, pursing his lips and whistling sharply. The dogs stopped growling, though they stayed tense. The butcher relaxed, wiping sweat off his face, and Ging grinned. “Nice. Did you train them?” The kid nodded again. “You did a good job.”

The kid turned slightly pink under all the dirt on his face, though he didn’t lose his guarded expression. The butcher snorted loudly.

“Only natural for a knot eater to get on well with dogs,” he said snidely. “I wouldn’t keep your hands on him too long, you know, he’ll probably give you fleas, or mange…”

Ging felt the kid stiffen and frowned. “There’s no need to be rude, you know, your meat’s right there. You can just take it back.”

A flicker of fear shot across the butcher’s face, quickly covered up with a haughtily offended expression. “Now that it’s been drooled on by these diseased mutts? I wouldn’t lay a finger on it, he can have it. There’s no salvaging meat that’s been stolen by animals.”

“… You’ll give it to him?” Ging asked flatly, his eyes narrowing. “Weren’t you saying you’d rather let it rot?”

The kid scowled as the butcher harrumphed, tugging at his collar. “Well, I said that, but, uh, you know, saying something’s different from doing it…”

He trailed off into a mumble, looking more harried by the second. Ging sighed internally, already sure he knew the cause, and turned to the kid again. “That meat’s poisoned.”

The kid and the butcher both froze, matching looks of horror dawning on their faces. The kid twisted himself around and whistled shrilly again, straining to get as close to his dogs as he could. The dogs immediately dropped the meat on the ground and their low growls intensified as they paced forward. The butcher mumbled something incoherent, his face darkening as he stared at the discarded bag.

Ging let the kid’s arm go, sighing externally in annoyance. “Well, anyway, it’s not really any of my business. What you do to protect your shop or whatever is your decision. If you’re prepared to kill somebody for it, that’s that.”

The angry flush drained from the butcher’s face and he blinked in confusion. “You’re… not going to tell the police…?”

“Nah,” Ging muttered, brushing past him. “But if that’s what you’re going to do, you’d best be prepared to give your life up as well.”

The water rushing through the sewer below them splashed up as the kid kicked the meat into it, carrying the bag and bones away in a matter of seconds. The butcher stepped forward, as if to reach out and grab the kid himself, but reeled back as a wall of _Nen_ flared up in front of him. The thief, his dogs snarling at his heels, stared at him dispassionately as his aura pulsed with a shroud of killing intent. Ging paused and glanced back, his interest in the situation redoubling.

“T-trash—” the butcher gasped, his knees and voice shaking. “I knew—I knew you weren’t h- human—”

“I’m not a dog,” the thief said, his voice low and rough with disuse. “But I’d rather be a dog than someone who kills them.”

The butcher had his back to Ging and thus Ging couldn’t see his expression, but it was easy to picture his terror warping into adrenaline-fueled rage. He seemed like that kind of guy. His hands balled up into trembling fists and he spat violently onto the ground at the thief’s feet.

To anyone who couldn’t read aura it would seem that there was no change on the thief’s face, but as his aura’s intimidation cut out Ging caught in both a curl of disgust. A third whistle had the dogs backing up behind him as he shifted his stance to be wider, aura concentrating in his hands and legs. The butcher breathed out in a rush and stumbled forward, reaching out for his neck. The thief ducked under his hands easily and caught his wrist, leveraging his momentum to pull him off his feet. With his left hand pressed to the butcher’s chest he dragged the man over his own head, coming up out of his crouch at the same time to throw him into the air.

The butcher made a strangled sound before all the wind was knocked out of his lungs; the thief’s heel dug into his stomach with all the force of his lightning-fast spin kick and pushed him out over the rushing water. The splash that he made was significantly larger than the bag of meat’s.  
The butcher surfaced, spitting water, just before the tide carried him around the bend and out of sight. The thief gave a satisfied hum before he turned to Ging, tensing warily.

“I wasn’t expecting him to gather his resolve to die so quickly,” Ging said mildly.

The thief’s brow furrowed, his eyes flicking toward the water for a moment before it smoothed again. “He won’t die. Water’s too low.”

“You sound pretty sure.”

“I am.”

As nonchalantly as Ging was endeavoring to present himself, the thief was still clearly on edge. “Well, this certainly isn’t the hill I’d like to die on, so you can relax. I’m not with the mob or anything.”

“I know.” At Ging’s inquisitive look the thief nodded to where the map was sticking out of his pocket. “I heard.”

“Oh, so that was you after all,” Ging said, giving him a pleased smile. “You did a pretty alright job tailing me. Who’d you learn _Zetsu_ from?”

The thief’s head tilted to the side in confusion and he stepped backwards toward the bend in the tunnel, his dogs falling in beside him. Ging cursed internally, only raising his eyebrows on the outside. “What, is it a secret?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the thief said tersely, glancing away for a second as he reached the corner. There was an echoed coughing sound and the distinct splash of someone very wet dragging themself onto land. The two dogs gave a low-pitched snarl but didn’t attack, just crouching at point. The thief wavered for a moment, looking back and forth between Ging and, presumably, the butcher, then straightened and pointed to the map.

“It’s fake.”

Ging blinked in surprise and pulled it out, unrolling it to look it over again. “Really? The streets seem pretty accurate to me.”

“The streets are fine. The marks for hideouts aren’t all right.”

“Aahh, I figured they’d fake some stuff. How would you know, though? You haven’t even seen this.”

“Makes sense.” He shrugged. “And there are fake houses. Trick passages they don’t know about.”

“But you do?”

“They’re strong, so they don’t have to know.”

Ging nodded slowly and turned the map around to show it to him. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to edit it.”

The thief shifted his weight, readying to run as a series of stumbling footsteps from down the tunnel came nearer. “No.”

Before he disappeared he looked back at Ging a last time, his guard slipping for the first time. “Thanks,” he said quietly, stroking the pit bull’s back.

“You’re not worried about this guy?”

A sly smile flickered across the thief’s face. “He’s too slow. No one’s managed to lay a hand on me so far.”

With that he vanished around the bend, his dogs following, and Ging snorted as there came another affronted shout from the butcher followed by a loud splash. Satisfied that the man didn’t need help he turned on his heel and strolled toward the outlet he’d originally entered by. The sun was still high in the sky and he rubbed his hand across the uneven stubble on his chin thoughtfully, a roguish grin emerging on his face.

“Sounds like a challenge to me,” he muttered.

 

\--

 

“Wait!! Wait, I— I’m here to tell you something important—”

“There’s nothing you can say we’d be interested in. You shouldn’t have come here, Mr. Lojarne, and you’ll have to pay for wasting our time…”

“Please, just listen, I swear it’s useful—”

“You have fifteen seconds to tell me why I shouldn’t just dispose of you now.”

“There’s a boy that knows where your hideouts are!!”

“…

“He simply sees our fronts. This is useless.”

“N-no, he was talking about trick passages, fake houses— aughh-!”

“When. And where. Did you hear this.”

“Earlier, not two hours ago, in the storm sewer— near my shop— he was telling some tourist about a map— urghh—”

“A map of _what?_ ”

“I don’t know— I don’t know— it had streets and hideouts, that’s all I heard, please—”

“This tourist, who is he and where did he get this _map?_ ”

“H-his name is, uhh, Ging- Ging Freecss, that was it!! He didn’t say where it came from, I don’t know, but the boy said it wasn’t right, it was fake— oh, god—”

“Freecss… And this boy, who is he? And _don’t_ say you don’t know, for your own good.”

“I know, I know— not his name, but he’s just some street rat, has a bunch of dogs that follow him around, long hair, blue coat, he must live in the shanty town somewhere…”

“Ah. I see. Well, Mr. Lojarne, it seems that you’ve managed to be of some use after all. Congratulations, you’ve exceeded my expectations. And your desired reward?”

“Uh, um, you see, I thought that maybe, since it’s important info, this month’s payment…”

“Duly noted. If this is indeed true, and you are not simply spinning lies to win favor, we shall see about a… temporary reprieve from your insurance payments.”

“Oh, thank you, it’s true, I swear, it’s all true—”

“That’s enough. If that’s all you have for us, leave. We’ll contact you after the situation’s been investigated.”

“Of course, sir, of course, I’ll see myself out, thank you…”

 

\--

 

In the southeastern outskirts of the shanty town, just where the buildings were beginning to taper off and be replaced by piles of junk and refuse, there was a pile of metal siding and wooden planks. They were propped haphazardly around each other, too purposefully for it to have been coincidental, and some were laid across the top at chest height. But any investigation of the place would be deterred firstly by the warning growls of mangy dogs, who roamed the nearby streets in packs, and secondly by the daunting task of finding a piece of the structure to remove that wouldn’t bring the whole thing crashing down. Because they were arranged so unevenly, each piece relied on the support of the others to keep it upright. It would be a far more involved task to dig through the rubble left behind—enough work to deter the curious.

Anyone who managed to overcome those obstacles, then—like Ging, who was absentmindedly petting one of the less sickly dogs—would be met with a wall of Ren that vibrated with the promise of violence.

“That’s three hours now,” he noted to the dog, who wagged its tail happily. Despite himself, he was impressed. Not a lot of people reached three hours at all, let alone without training. But just a strong _Ren_ wasn’t enough to drive off the truly determined, surely. Any _Nen_ user who managed to climb to the top of a mob would be able to push through it. “I wonder when he’ll make a move…”

Standoffs were nice and all, but Ging was getting bored with sitting on the street and waiting for the kid to act first. He had to have contingency plans—few enemies would sit and wait for so long. And he’d have to move before running out of _Nen_ to have any chance of escape at all. _Not long now,_ Ging thought. The _Ren_ had been wavering for ten minutes.

He stood and brushed off his pants, sighing. It would have been easier to just go up to the structure and make him bolt, probably, but he’d wanted to see if the kid would come out peacefully of his own accord. A bit much to hope for, really, considering that they’d only met once and barely spoken. The dog by his side, a bony terrier with a spotted brown coat, whined and pressed against his legs, looking up at him sadly. Ging grinned and patted its head, moving to look down a side street behind him in case there were any more dogs who’d appreciate the company.

The moment he turned his back there was a terrific crash and when he spun around the ramshackle structure was collapsing to the ground in pieces. He swore under his breath but grinned, catching a glimpse of a faded blue coat whipping around a corner at the far end of the alleyway opposite him. He dug his feet into the ground to break into a sprint himself, but stumbled when the dog darted across his path, its hackles up. It wasn’t difficult for Ging to sidestep it, especially with how the dog leapt away from him once he got close, but the obstacle had bought a second. It would have been more effective against someone without Ging’s intensely fine reflexes, which he was self-aware enough to know were leagues better than most people’s. His grin grew and he jumped across the pile of rubble that had been the kid’s hiding place, taking off after him.

Ging kept a careful eye out for any more dogs, dodging them as they snapped at his heels—a few kept pace with him, but for the most part they darted into his way and then vanished into the junk piles and unsound buildings again. A Manipulator, most likely, Ging mused, though it was possible the dogs were just really, really well trained and quite territorial. Neither would be surprising.

It would be easier to track the kid down if he wasn’t so good at _Zetsu_ —he’d completely vanished. It was even possible that he’d found another hiding place and waited for Ging to pass him by, though frankly unlikely. But a possibility was enough, and Ging took the precaution of using _En_. There was always a confusing moment between being aware of what one’s own senses could perceive and being aware of everything in a fifty-meter radius. But sensing the touch of another person’s aura always cut through that and Ging turned in mid-step as thirty meters away an aura flared in alarm and a human shape bolted away from where Ging’s aura originated.

Or tried to, since a second later Ging was standing right in his path. To his credit, the kid in the long coat only froze for a fraction of a second before he pivoted and swung his staff-like weapon at Ging’s face. Ging blocked it with his forearm easily, leaning his head away from the pointy metal bit at the end, and watched with interest as the kid went for his knees next, then a feint to his face that turned into a jab at his stomach, the face again—he was pretty good, though not as good at fighting as he was at running and hiding. A product of his lifestyle, Ging supposed. Each time his strikes were rebuffed the kid hit harder and at last Ging had to put _Nen_ behind his block as the weapon was reinforced with _Shu_.

“Oh, not bad,” Ging muttered to himself. “I actually felt that one a little bit.” It was an innocuous enough comment but the kid’s eyes widened and he darted back, keeping his weapon up defensively as he fought to catch his breath. The distance let Ging get a better look at the thing and he couldn’t help but snort. The only thing keeping it from being a staff was what looked like an oversized railroad spike stabbed through a rock, which was tied to the end of the wood with metal wire. A passable, makeshift pike of sorts, though not one that would hold up for long in a real fight.

The kid shifted his grip and moved into a decent fighting stance, though he was still partially poised to run. Ging hummed thoughtfully and didn’t move as he swung again, wondering why the kid hadn’t cut his hair when so much of it was clearly getting in his eyes. As the spike neared his neck he kept his guard down, testing if—

—the kid’s eyes widened and at the last moment he faltered, the attack losing power suddenly as it seemed like it would actually connect. In the fraction of a second it took for the pike to move half an inch Ging smirked in satisfaction and caught the point in his hand, halting it completely.

“You know, I’m not actually here to fight,” he said easily, holding the weapon in place as the kid strained to pull it back out of his grip. “And clearly you don’t really want to either, so how about we just calm down? I thought we were getting on pretty well before.”

The kid examined him warily, his stance having shifted back to being primed to flee. Sweat dripped down his face and he was still breathing hard, unsurprisingly considering how much Nen he’d been using. Ging let go of the pike and the kid quickly pulled it back into his own hands, spinning it around his wrist and stepping back. He stopped when there were a few meters between them and watched Ging closely.

“Then,” he said quietly, his voice as rough as it had been before, “why are you here?”

Ging smiled and let his arms hang by his sides, his hands in plain sight. “I wanted to meet you.”

The kid blinked in actual shock, his guard falling for a second. “What?”

“I wanted to meet you,” Ging repeated.

Hearing it again seemed to be enough to assure the kid he’d heard Ging right, though he still looked bewildered. “ _Why?_ ”

“Because you’re interesting?” Ging shrugged and held up his hands, pointing at the makeshift pike. “Like, how did you learn to fight? To use _Nen?_ Why’re you by yourself? Are all those dogs yours?”

The kid kept staring at him, relaxing his stance little by little. “… Interesting?”

“Uh,” Ging muttered awkwardly, wondering how long it would take for the conversation to actually progress to his questions. “Yes. Interesting. You.”

“Oh.” A small cloud of dust puffed up as the kid let the pike’s head drop to the ground, though he kept his hand on it.

Ging glanced around as the silence stretched, letting it in case the kid was going to volunteer anything. But he didn’t, just looking at Ging as if he’d suddenly started speaking another language. “Right, anyway,” Ging said, “that place that fell down was your house, right? I can help put it back up if you want.”

“There’s others. No need.” The kid’s eyes flicked in the direction that the messy structure had been in, a frown belying the guarded nonchalance of his tone. “I’ll move the stuff somewhere.”

“I’ll help with that—” Ging started to offer, stepping forward, but halted in his tracks as the kid snapped back into his fighting stance, bringing his weapon to bear and watching him fearfully. Ging raised his hands, showing them to be empty, and approached more slowly. The kid tensed and retreated until his back was to the building. He shifted his weight to one side, crouching slightly to sprint, but hesitated as Ging spoke again.

“Hey,” he said, keeping his tone carefully gentle. “I’m not going to hurt you, remember? I’m just here to talk, it’s okay…” He reached out when he got close enough and the kid flinched away from his hand, wavering just on the edge of bolting. He was shaking like a leaf the closer Ging’s hand came to him, but for whatever reason he stayed still long enough to freeze up when Ging lightly rested that hand on the top of his head.

“It’s okay,” Ging repeated, stroking his hair softly. The kid relaxed his stance incrementally again, lowering his weapon and looking up at Ging in open astonishment. “I’ll help you move your stuff, since I’m why your house fell down in the first place.”

“And,” the kid said quietly, his shoulders still hunched and tense, “what do you want in return?”

Ging cocked his head to the side and grinned. “Nothing.”

“…”

“You don’t believe me?”

The kid gave him a look that clearly said ‘of course not’.

“Ah, man… uhh, okay, how about I help you out in return for you answering my questions?”

“About what?”

“About you.” Ging shrugged. “Indulge my curiosity.”

The kid looked dubious, but nodded slowly. Ging grinned and lifted his hand again, propping it up on his hip and subtly wiping off some of the dirt from the kid’s frankly filthy hair. The kid turned his face away slightly, though his eyes stayed locked on Ging, and whistled sharply. Several dogs emerged from shadows and from below piles of junk, pacing forward warily. The kid whistled again, a lower and gentler tone, and they relaxed. One of them trotted forward and pressed against Ging’s legs, its tail wagging happily.

“Oh, it’s you again!” Ging said, rubbing the terrier’s ears. “Aww, hi there. You caught up fast, did you?”

The kid blinked in surprise as the terrier yipped and tried to lick Ging’s fingers. “They don’t like people. Usually.”

“They like you.”

“I feed them.” The pit bull sans an eye pressed its head up into his hand and the kid scratched its neck absentmindedly. “Dogs will be loyal to anyone who gives them regular meals and a bit of affection.”

The tension having diffused, the dogs were gathering around Ging’s legs and sniffing him intensely. He looked them all over with no small amusement, petting as many as he could reach. “I don’t know about that, dogs can be quite loyal to their masters regardless of who’s nice to them. Or even what’s best for them.

“You trained these guys, right?”

The kid nodded shortly. Ging patiently shifted his expectations, since it was becoming clear that the kid was only rarely going to volunteer anything Ging didn’t directly ask for. “Did you use _Nen_ to do it?”

“… What?”

“Did you use a Manipulation skill to train them.” The kid’s head tilted sideways slightly and he looked bewildered again. Ging paused and straightened up suddenly, putting the dogs out of his mind. “Wait, you know what _Nen_ is, right?”

The kid stiffened defensively. “You were talking about that with Nora and Kyleen, too.”

“Yeah, they can use it.” Ging gestured in a vague circle. The kid’s eyes tracked his hand. “I did too, a second ago, to find you. And you used it on that weapon of yours.”

Understanding smoothed the furrow on the kid’s brow. “Oh, the energy. It’s called _Nen?_ ”

“Right. Did you use it when you were training these dogs, to get them to do what you said?”

“No.”

Ging whistled under his breath, impressed. The dogs’ ears pricked up for a second before they went back to snuffling at his pant legs. “Wow. How’d you train them so well?”

The kid frowned at the small crowd of dogs clustered around Ging, not answering. “Toothmark,” he called suddenly, leaning down to greet the terrier that had taken to Ging with a rub on its back. “… Are you using _Nen_ on them?”

“Nah, but Hunters tend to be good with animals,” Ging said happily, kneeling so that the golden retriever he’d seen before could lick his face. Its breath smelled terrible. “That one’s named Toothmark?”

“Yeah.”

“What’re the rest named?”

The kid hesitated before pointing out each dog, staring with the pit bull and retriever. “Socket Face. Fetch. Rabbit Hole. Puddlepaw. Smother…”

He went on in that vein and Ging made a mental note that his skill at hiding did not transfer over to skill at naming things. He held the names in his head carefully, committing them to memory, and when the kid finished he waited expectantly. The kid didn’t say anything further and, when Ging straightened up, shifted his weight from foot to foot.

“And you?”

The kid’s head tilted again and Ging pointed at him. “What’s your name?”

Surprise dispelled his confusion and the kid faltered for a long second, glancing away. “… Kite,” he said finally. “My name’s Kite.”

“Nice to meet you, Kite,” Ging said, turning his hand palm-up. “I’m Ging. Ging Freecss.”

Kite stared at his hand before taking it uncertainly, loosely, his wrist twitching as if to pull away every time Ging so much as moved a muscle. “Nice to meet you,” he echoed slowly.

 

\--

 

“So how _did_ you train them?” Ging asked, shifting aside one of the pieces of sheet metal that had once helped make up Kite’s house. Or living space, as it were.

Kite moved the next one, lifting it easily despite his ostensibly being skin and bones. “Food. Praise. They’re smart, they learned fast.”

“And you did it all yourself?” Beneath the metal and splintered boards was a small wooden chest, which Ging dragged out and carried away from the wreckage. He set it down next to the assorted pile of dirty rags that Kite had retrieved a moment earlier.

“Not at first.” Kite left the pile and came over to look inside the box, frowning and tapping his fingers on his knee as he inspected the contents. There was a bottle of something with a pleased-looking cartoon dog and a bug with crossed-out eyes on the label—presumably a flea treatment of some sort—as well as some shabby books and a surprisingly well-kept set of clothes. At Ging’s interested look he went on. “I don’t remember well, but there was a woman. She trained the dogs at first. I learned, and when she died they stayed with me.”

“Your mother?”

Kite shrugged and put the rags into the box, latching it. “Doubt it.”

“Who were your parents, then?”

“Dunno. Never knew them.” He kept his face down. “If they cared, they’d have come by now.”

“… What do you remember about the woman?”

Ging took the chest as Kite picked up his pike again, whistling for the dogs to follow as they set out. Hanging from the weapon in the classic image of a hitchhiker’s sack was a blanket stuffed with assorted canned food and dog treats. Kite led the way, thinking for a minute before he answered. The dogs trailed along after them, coming and going as they pleased. “I wasn’t born here. I’m not sure where I was, or when. We came when I was little, but I don’t know why. And it never really mattered to me. She said to call her Owl and she trained the dogs. And taught me to read.”

“And use Nen?”

Kite shook his head. “She died before I started using it.”

“When was that?”

“I’m not sure. It’s hard to keep track.”

“Approximately, then.” Kite blinked at him and Ging rephrased. “What’s your best guess?”

“… Nine years? Maybe.”

Ging glanced sidelong at him. The fatigue of surviving made it hard to tell his age, but he was probably around fifteen or sixteen. Seventeen would be really pushing it. A solid bit younger than Ging’s twenty-three, then. “Damn. Sorry.”

The end of Kite’s pike dropped suddenly as the handle slipped out of his fingers and his hand jerked up to catch it. He clutched it, staring at Ging uncertainly.

“Anyway,” Ging said awkwardly, shifting his hold on the chest and looking around at the dilapidated houses, “where are we going?”

“The ghost town.”

“Aren’t we already in the town?”

“The shanty town. The ghost town’s a bit of it I stay in sometimes. Not often. Not a lot of people. Lots of empty houses. But the mob people use it for meetings, so it’s not safe.

“… It’s where I met Nora and Kyleen,” he said, watching Ging out of the corner of his eye.

Ging hummed thoughtfully, digesting the information. “So they’re involved with the mob, huh? I figured as much. But they don’t want to stick around anymore, it seems.”

“No,” Kite agreed, “they’re too nice. They want to protect each other too much.”

A lull fell over the conversation as Ging contemplated. Kite kept watching him, shifting his grip on the pike more agitatedly as the silence stretched. “Why did you want a map?” he asked suddenly, his mouth snapping shut quickly when Ging looked his way.

“Hmm, well, I was mostly curious about the shanty town, since this city’s pretty well known for how extensively the mob’s involved in it. You’d know better than I would about that, though.”

Kite nodded, relaxing slightly. “Hardly anybody’s not in it or under it. They’re good at pinning people down.”

“But not as good as you are at getting away,” Ging pointed out with a grin.

Kite looked down, his expression going stiff and flat. “I do what I have to,” he said quietly.

Ging regarded him with interest, but didn’t press yet. “I’ll admit I was hoping to meet somebody strong here. I’m thinking about starting a big project that would take a ton of power to pull off, so I need to find people like that. Getting to the main hideouts would help a lot.”

It took a second, but sure enough Kite lifted his gaze again, almost shy as he offered “I could fix it. The map. I know where they really are.”

“Yeah?” Ging said, his grin widening. “That would be great. Thank you, Kite.”

Kite turned red and looked forward again, mumbling something about pens and trick doors.

“What?”

“There’s secret tunnels in the covered town. I can mark them. They’re how…” he bit his tongue mid-sentence, trailing off as he recalled to keep his guard up. “The mob uses them.”

“Ah,” Ging said, guessing that they were also how Kite evaded capture for so many years. “I would appreciate it.”

There hadn’t been many people trailing around the outskirts of the shanty town in the first place, but as they walked their surroundings emptied out more and more. The houses morphed from patchwork living spaces to shells that had long since been left to gather dust and rust. The sun was just reached the end of its dive to the horizon and was kissing the edge of the ground; the light cast heavy swaths of darkness across the deserted street. A shadow of wary tension had reappeared in the set of Kite’s shoulders and Ging sighed internally, lamenting his lost progress.

Best to change the subject, perhaps. “Nora and Kyleen said that you didn’t learn _Nen_ from them, or from the mob. And Owl didn’t teach you, either. So how’d you start using it?”

Kite tilted his head as he remembered. “Not long after Owl died a mob guy tried to catch me and he was using it, I think. He did some kind of… throwing motion? And something I couldn’t see hit me. I fell over into the storm water and got swept away. He couldn’t keep up, or maybe just thought I was dead. It felt like it. That was when I first felt the energy, uh, _Nen_.

“… It was hard to control, at first. But I figured it out. I had to.”

Ging nodded slowly. The baptism method made sense, since there weren’t exactly _Nen_ masters handing out lessons to street rats. And a life of constant struggle to survive didn’t lend itself well to introspective meditation. But… “I’m shocked you’re alive, to be honest,” he said. “He probably wasn’t trying to kill you, or I guarantee you’d be dead. Lucky break. But a lot of people whose _Nen_ is awakened that way end up dying because they can’t keep their aura from escaping. _Nen’s_ the same thing as life energy, you know, so running out of it is fatal.”

“It felt like I was dying,” Kite said in a low voice. “Little by little.”

“How’d you get control of it?”

Kite fished a treat out of his bag and gave it to Socket Face as she lumbered up beside him. “If I died, there wouldn’t be anyone to feed them. And it was such a horrible feeling… like pieces of me were being torn away…”

He shuddered and shook his head. “But I survived and now I can use it to run faster, or hide better, or hit harder if it comes to that.”

Ging shifted his grip on the wooden chest, eyeing a beggar who was sizing them up from the shadows of a squat house. They turned and disappeared into the dark, darting away with a small sneer. Ging frowned and kept watch more sharply as they got into the silent, eerie main row of abandoned houses. “I don’t suppose you’ve ever done water divination?”

The look on Kite’s face was enough to answer that question in the negative. “Okay, once we’ve put this stuff away I’ll show you how. Basically, there are different types of _Nen_ and the water divination trick can show you which one you’re best at.”

“Is manipulation one of them?” Kite asked, his face brightening slightly. “Like you said with the dogs.”

“You remembered?” Ging grinned, surprised. “Yeah, Manipulation’s one of the six. People who develop skill with _Nen_ without guidance are often Specialists, so I’m interested to see what kind of _Nen_ user you are.”

Kite tugged his collar up a little bit higher, not quite smiling but turning pink with embarrassed pleasure. “Um. The house I stay in sometimes is coming up. It’s better to get into it from the side than the front.” He put his thumb and index finger into his mouth and whistled loudly, causing every dog in sight to prick up their ears and bound away. “They’ll bark if they see or smell anyone scary. We can get through the upstairs windows, they’re all broken.”

True enough, the glass in the upstairs windows of each house had long since been shattered. Bits of jagged glass jutted out from the sills, but someone—three guesses who—had broken them away from the bottommost one so that one could climb through the window without getting lacerated. Each house’s second floor had the same layout of bedrooms, so their windows directly faced one another. The stuff of high-school romance stories, Ging mused. Kite peered carefully through each window, searching the surrounding area for any other watchers, before diving across the gap between houses. He was skinny enough to be able to fit through the gap, tucking into a somersault as he landed in the opposite bedroom. Upon closer inspection Ging noted that in a few places blue threads were caught on the glass, which accounted for the tears in Kite’s coat. Ging had to move more carefully, passing across the chest and pike before leaping across himself, silently grateful for how easy it was to keep from getting cut up with _Nen_.

“… This one,” Kite said once they’d crossed through eight houses. “You can leave it here.”

Ging set the chest down next to a patch of wall that was crumbling away enough to show the support beams beneath the drywall. Nothing particularly differentiated this house from the others, but in a place like this one that would be pretty important. He also doubted that this was the real place Kite stayed, but in the end it didn’t really matter. “Alright. This place really is a ghost town. The only people I’ve seen for the past fifteen minutes are you and that person who ran off.”

“They went to go report us,” Kite said absently, pulling the rags out of the chest and arranging them in a pile in the corner.

“To who?”

“Mob people.”

“Hmm. Isn’t it bad that they know you’re here?”

“They don’t try and chase me as much as they used to. They know I’m too fast for them.”

“Fair enough.” Ging paused as a dog barked outside and moved to the room adjacent, looking out the window there down the barren street. Two blurs slid stealthily from shadow to shadow, approaching them. One looked up and Ging gave her a wave. The smile on his face faded as Kyleen’s expression switched from concerned concentration to exasperated anger. She tapped Nora’s shoulder and indicated where he stood at the window. Nora glared at him too. Ging rubbed his stubbly chin in confusion as Kite peeked out the window around him, waving as well.

The women searched up and down the street before they darted across. Ging went to meet them at the top of the stairs, which despite their apparent ire they didn’t make much noise while ascending. The distant sound of dogs barking at the two of them wasn’t loud enough to distract anyone from their rapid entry.

He’d only just opened his mouth to say ‘Long time no see’ when Nora’s finger jabbed at his nose. “I don’t know what the _fuck_ you think you’re playing at, clod sniffer,” she snarled, striding forward so that he had to backpedal until he hit the far wall, “but where we come from people who squeal tend to lose teeth.”

“What on earth are you talking about?” Ging asked, holding up his hands defensively. “Who squealed?? Oh god, this is Mito all over again.”

“Somebody let the cat out of the bag about the map,” Kyleen said coldly, tense enough that veins stood out in her clenched hands. “And it wasn’t us.”

“Wasn’t me either!”

Nora snorted derisively. “And who else knew about it, huh? You’re gonna take responsibility for the goons on our tail, tourist—”

“It wasn’t his fault,” Kite cut in, his hand hovering near Kyleen’s sleeve.

“Little ghost,” she muttered, dropping her crossed arms. “Seems like they’re after you, too, so you should keep your head down for a while. This isn’t something you should get tangled up in—”

“The butcher must’ve overheard,” Kite interrupted again, hesitating a second before he went on, watching Kyleen’s hands warily. “I said I could fix the parts that were wrong, and he passed it on, so it’s not Ging’s fault they know.”

Nora and Kyleen both temporarily forgot to be angry at Ging as they stared, shocked, at Kite, who tugged on his collar and glanced away, his voice dropping. “Sorry.”

“Holy shit,” Nora said. “I don’t think you’ve ever said more than two words to us before.”

Kyleen pressed her hand to her mouth in thought and sighed slowly. “It makes sense. That’s why they’re prioritizing you over us… I thought it might be that they were trying to bait us, but if they know you know where their hiding places are…”

“Is that why you came here instead of booking it?” Ging asked, squinting at Nora’s still-upraised finger. “To try and find him first?”

Kyleen nodded, crossing her arms again. “But we should split up. They’re going after all of us, for various reasons—too bad for you, tourist, just giving up the map won’t be enough to save your hide. It’ll be harder for them to pin us down that way.”

Ging raised his hand, waving it slightly to get her attention. “Question. Who’s ‘they’?”

Nora sighed impatiently. “Okay, cliff notes version. My former dad Giovanni’s the mob boss and Kyleen and I’re fuckin’ star-crossed lovers and shit and we’re running away because it turns out the mob is goddamn terrible. Hence why we took your cash. Now Giovanni’s gunning for all our asses and he’s got practically the whole city under his thumb so we’re pretty much fucked. Satisfied?”

He nodded and she put her hands on her hips, turning to face Kyleen with a worried scowl. “It’s ten minutes tops before the goons get here, and that’s if we’re miraculously lucky.” Ging tapped her shoulder and she spun, snapping “What??”

“How strong is your father?”

Nora blinked in surprise and Ging pressed on. “Because I’m looking for powerful _Nen_ users to help with a project, and he’d be rewarded for any work he did, so that could be a fair exchange.”

“First of all,” she said coldly, “he’s not my father. Secondly, I guarantee you he’s not interested. Giovanni only cares about keeping control of his city.”

Ging huffed, annoyed, but accepted the veto. “You’d know better than I would. In any case, I can distract them for a while if you want to make a break for it.”

“By yourself?” Kyleen asked, disbelief coloring her tone. At her side, Kite was pulling at loose threads on his coat cuff nervously. “What, you’re going to make some heroic sacrifice?”

Kite made a little noise of protest. “There’s tunnels that lead far away. We don’t have to fight…”

Nora stiffened and held up her hand for silence. In the hush, snarls and howls of alarm were distinctly audible. “Too late,” she said a second before bullets ripped through the air around them.

She and Ging, who were more directly in the line of sight of the neighboring bedroom windows, called up their auras in a blaze that repelled the bullets before they found their targets; Nora swung her bag through the air and knocked them away, the metal impacting the cloth harmlessly as she enveloped it with _Shu_ , and Ging pressed himself against the wall so that they sailed past him. Kyleen had grabbed Kite and dragged him down to the floor with her, crouching by his side as she kept her eyes on the stairway.

“Here we go,” she muttered. “Little ghost—”

“Kite.”

Kyleen blinked in surprise for a fraction of a second, then refocused. She laid a hand on his upper arm, from which he nearly twitched away. “Kite. Do you know of a way out of here that’s not the window or stairs?”

“The roof.”

She nodded sharply. “Go. Get out of the city.”

“But you—”

“This was never supposed to be your fight. _Go._ ”

Before Kite could argue further she swung herself around the banister and into an ascending goon, driving her foot into their gut and propelling them back into their reinforcements. They all tumbled down the stairs with a terrific crash, Kyleen taking the stairs down three at a time as she dove into the crowd that was only just lifting their guns. It was hard to tell exactly what happened next through the confused mess of limbs flying everywhere and yelling, but with mob members collapsing to the floor one by one, it seemed like she was winning.

Nora, swinging her bag through the air more quickly than seemed possible for such a cumbersome thing, yelled “Eat my _entire_ ass!!” at the people shooting through the windows of the adjacent houses. Grabbing her bag handle, she dragged her hands apart without loosening her grip as her Nen coalesced into two duplicate bags and the real one dropped to her feet. Each replica was sent hurtling into a house and, after a moment of panicked, muffled yelling, they detonated.

The resulting clouds of smoke and confusion allowed Kite to dive into the bedroom he and Ging had entered the house from, grab his pike, and clamber out the window up onto the roof. His footsteps over their heads were barely there past all the commotion of violence, but Ging traced them well enough. “Hey,” he called to Nora over all the shouting, “can they get up to the roof too?”

“Doubt it,” Nora yelled back. “There’s no ladders or stairs or anything, so they’d have to climb like he did, and they aren’t nearly as practiced—”

A curl of intense bloodlust sliced through the air and she stiffened, her head snapping up as she stared through the walls. “Shit,” she breathed. “Shit, shit, what is he doing here?! He _never_ gets his hands dirty, oh fuck, he must really be pissed—”

“Nora,” Kyleen shouted from the ground floor, “he’s on the roofs!!”

The amount of time it took for Nora to spit another stream of curses was the same length as the time it took for Ging to bust through what was left of the bedroom window, glass sparkling through smoke and splinters of windowsill, and drag himself up onto the roof with one hand. The aura of bloodlust was easy to trace to its source: a squat, burly man with a more than passing resemblance to Nora two rooftops away. Kite stood, his pike shaking visibly in his hands, on the roof between he and Ging.

“You’re that gutter muck my men’ve been trying to pin down for years,” Giovanni noted, looking Kite up and down with amused derision. “You know, if you’d come willingly I would’ve looked after you.”

“So I could kill for you. Like all of them.” Ging couldn’t see Kite’s face but his head was turning from side to side agitatedly and he was shuffling his feet backwards without breaking his defensive stance. The structure of the rows of houses meant that there was nowhere for him to go but toward Giovanni, toward Ging, or down two stories onto the craggy concrete road. And going toward Ging would mean turning his back on the enemy.

“It’s not a bad life,” Giovanni said mildly. He had his hands casually buried in his pockets, a mockingly nonchalant tilt to his voice. “You’d be fed. Given shelter. A comfortable bed of your own, imagine that… A little blood on your hands isn’t too high a price to pay for a better life, for being stronger than everyone else, now, is it?”

Kite didn’t bother answering and Giovanni’s vague smile dropped. “Have it your way, then.”

His aura redoubled and he stepped forward, digging his foot into the edge of the roof, but before he could jump over the gap a lumpy, patched-up bag sailed up from the gap in front of Ging and behind Kite. Giovanni faltered for just a moment at the sight of it and as its arc sloped downward again it flashed with light right in front of his face.

He shouted unintelligibly in rage and pain as it exploded and forced him back. He crashed into the roof beyond where he’d been standing, placing a swath of empty space between he and Kite. He rolled and nearly got onto his feet, smoke clinging to his charred suit, but had to dive forward again as Kyleen flipped gracefully up onto the roof and slammed her foot down where his head had been a second ago, hard enough to break through the roof. Kite took the opportunity to pivot and leap onto the roof Ging stood on, sprinting across it to the next one—but the henchmen on the ground floor, freed up from fending off Kyleen, began shooting up from the street at them and he had to fall into a crouch to avoid getting hit. He scooted back toward the middle of the roof with Ging, searching the limited amount of the area he could see for an escape route again.

“This is what it’s come to, Nora?” Giovanni shouted, his face purpling. “Gutter muck and knot eaters!?”

“Better than the soulless!” Nora yelled back, her voice nearly drowned out by the hail of bullets.

Kyleen wordlessly threw herself at Giovanni again, engaging in a flurry of blows that forced him to stay on the defensive. Her attacks thudded against his arms, which he kept upraised to protect his head, and as Ging focused it became clear that they were both using huge bursts of _Nen._ The loose stones and pieces of drywall on the roofs trembled with the combined weight of their auras.

Ging set his jaw and was about to move to help when he felt Kite poke his arm. He had to lean in close to hear him. “If those bullets hit you, will you die?”

Ging raised an eyebrow. It would’ve been a ridiculous question if he hadn’t already used his _En_ to find Kite—that brief exposure must’ve been enough for Kite to approximate his strength. “No,” he answered, shaking his head.

Kite swallowed visibly and brought his hand up to his mouth, not hiding his apprehensive fear very well. “Then stand up, just for a second.”

Ging’s eyebrows drew down—if he stood, that would put his head just within the henchmen’s line of sight. But Kite held his gaze steadily, if nervously, so Ging nodded and straightened up. The goons who had been shifting around on the street trying to get a clear shot at Kyleen immediately changed tack, opening fire at him.

The resulting force of the aura he needed to enhance his defenses froze everyone in their tracks for a full second. The henchmen’s aim went wild as they flinched back, their fingers slipping off the triggers; Nora swore loudly from below him; the momentum of Kyleen and Giovanni’s fight faltered as they both half-turned to stare at him. In that brief silence Kite, having expected the sudden new burden in the atmosphere enough to keep moving, put his fingers in his mouth and gave an ear-splitting whistle.

The crack of gunfire was replaced by the shocked screams of the people on the street as a small army of dogs burst out of the sunset-cast shadows and sank their teeth into whatever they could reach. This was largely calves and heels. Socket Face bounded forward and jumped up high enough to drag a woman down by the wrist, snapping it with one fierce shake of her head.

As quickly as they’d appeared the dogs darted back through the gaping holes in the dilapidated houses, dragging the henchmen’s guns out of their reach. A few people chased after them, but as they broke away from the protection the crowd of people offered the dogs brought them down to their knees, too agile to be caught by fists or knives.

It only took a few seconds for the crowd to be all but neutralized. Ging cut off his aura, breathing hard as blood dripped from a few hits his face had taken—bullets were bullets, even for _Nen_ masters. Kyleen was already spinning into a series of kicks that pushed Giovanni back inch by inch, retreating when he lashed out in turn. He hadn’t landed a blow yet, but Kyleen’s aura was being devoted largely to attacking so he would only need one. Knowing this, she danced around his attacks with all the fluidity of water.

Nora had charged out of the house and was slamming her bag into the heads of those still conscious and able to move around. Ging frowned, noting that the dogs were pacing around her as well, and turned expectantly to Kite—

—who was still pressed down against the floor of the roof, staring down at the cracked drywall like it was the most horrifying thing he’d ever seen with his hands clamped over his ears, shaking. A yelp of pain came from a downed man as Nora knocked him out and Kite flinched, closing his eyes. Ging swore internally, devoting half his attention to Giovanni and the other half to kneeling by Kite’s side, pulling his hands away from his ears carefully. Kite spasmed and thrashed in his grip before his eyes refocused and he looked between Ging’s face and Kyleen’s battle for a confused instant.

“Kite,” Ging said, more harshly than he’d intended to but there wasn’t time enough to be gentle. “Call off the dogs.”

Kite blankly put his fingers up to whistle again, only making faltering hisses twice before he could catch his breath enough to blow. The sound was shaky, but when Ging checked the dogs had disappeared back into the ghost town.

“… Good,” he muttered, rubbing Kite’s head briefly before pulling him up to his feet. The sun was dipping below the horizon, the shadows spreading to claim the area for their own. The lights of the city were far too distant to illuminate anything, let alone the treacherous rooftops and shattered road. It wouldn’t be long before they were enveloped in complete darkness.

A whirl of movement caught his eye as Kyleen skidded across the roof adjacent to theirs, digging her fingers through the wood to halt her momentum and come up into a crouch. She coughed roughly and, just barely visible, drops of a dark liquid splattered around her knees. Giovanni landed with a crash on the roof beyond that, bloodlust curdling his aura as he bared his teeth in a satisfied snarl.

“Street rat, I’ll show you your place, you think you can take her away from me—”

The building beneath his feet rolled, its shape warping outward before the whole thing burst in a conflagration of splintered beams and roiling smoke. Giovanni vanished, screaming as he fell through the shell of what remained of the roof. Ging quickly shoved Kite back down and crouched in front of him, deflecting the pieces of the house that came whirling toward them. Kyleen knocked away most of it, backing up to the far edge of her building.

“Nobody’s _taking_ me, asshole!” Nora yelled. There was another fantastic crash and eruption of sparks as she slammed her bag into the ruins of the house, a shockwave of Nen blasting the debris out across the street. “I’m _leaving!!_ ”

Once the air was clear again Ging moved to stare over the edge of the roof; it was hard to see anything among the wreckage, though the bonfire that the house had become certainly helped light up the area. But after a second a pile of wood shifted and a human shape dragged itself to its feet, stumbling.

Kyleen waved to get his attention and, when Ging looked up at her, gestured for him to leave. He opened his mouth to argue but she gestured again and, as the dancing flames framed the set of her shoulders and Nora’s shadow flickered across the road, he recognized the request she was making. _Not yours._

One more time he pulled Kite up. “Come on,” he said sharply. “We’re getting out of the way.”

They retreated until it was nearly impossible to make out what was happening. The row of houses shook with tremors, occasional explosions lighting up the area for an instant. Kite stayed stuck to his side, shivering. His grip on Ging’s sleeve tightened as, silhouetted against a flare of fire, a tall figure hit the ground again and bounced.

“Why aren’t you helping them?” he asked, a frantic edge to his voice.

“Not my fight,” Ging muttered, squinting intensely. “She told me to back off, so there you go. Besides, it’s clearly something they’d want to do themselves.”

“But you’re strong, you could…”

“That’s not really the point. It’s a personal matter, so interfering would be. Well, rude, I guess is the word. Insulting.”

Kite stared at him in utter confusion and Ging sniffed, annoyance slipping into his tone. “I feel sort of left out, though, I haven’t really done much. And he’s pretty powerful, it might have been fun to take him on…”

“How is it better,” Kite breathed, “to be dead than insulted??”

Ging contemplated the question for a few seconds. The thought had never really occurred to him. It had always seemed clear that pride took precedence over life. “It’s… hard to express verbally. It’s more of a feeling, a sense of what you can live with and what you can’t, your dignity.” He crossed his arms and huffed as Kite still looked at him uncomprehendingly. “If you don’t get it I can’t explain it to you!”

Another explosion rocked the area. The two shorter figures struggled for a moment, then one got the upper hand and suplexed the other into the jagged concrete. Ging winced, rubbing the back of his neck sympathetically. The one still standing was promptly thrown back by a flying kick that connected directly to their face; Ging tracked the movement as Giovanni rolled and Kyleen knelt by Nora’s side. There was a tense moment as all parties regarded one another, not moving.

A glint of metal coalesced around Kyleen’s hands and she jumped directly up in the air, a chunk of debris clutched in her hand that she curled up to position below her feet. The movement spurred Giovanni forward, but Nora caught him in the chest with a brute swing of her bag and he careened back again. In one smooth movement Nora turned and threw a replica up that reached the height of its arc right behind Kyleen. The power of the explosion propelled the debris down at an angle and Kyleen pushed off of it, the added strength giving her enough speed to hit the ground where Giovanni stumbled with enough force to create a small crater. The wave of wind produced at the same time hit Ging’s face and he whistled, impressed enough to forget to be jealous.

Kite was leaning forward worriedly but didn’t move until Ging did several minutes later. As they approached Nora glanced over but didn’t say anything, pressing her fingers delicately to Kyleen’s side. Kyleen hissed quietly with pain, her metal-clad fingers digging into the chunk of rock she sat on. The end of each finger on the gloves came to a wicked, clawed point. They were stained up to the wrist with blood.

“Well,” Ging said, clapping his hands together, “that was _very_ exciting.”

 

\--

 

With Giovanni dead the commotion ceased and the remainder of Ging’s stay in Ecinev went more or less quietly. The surviving members of the mob slunk into the shadows to nurse their wounds. Nora and Kyleen, once they’d patched one another up, took their money and booked it. At Ging’s inquiry they said they’d be using burner phones, if anything at all, so trying to keep in contact would be more difficult than was worth it. He had the impression that they were leery of working under the spotlight of legal channels, even if the relationship the Hunter Association had to police and government was tenuous at best. It made sense, considering their background, and he let it go without a fight; if they were going to meet again someday, they’d meet again someday.

He’d only just left the borders of the city the next day when a tentative voice called his name. Kite, picking at the sleeves of his threadbare coat with his shoulders hunched up and his collar hiding his face again, eyed Ging’s travel bag anxiously.

“You’re leaving?”

Ging turned to face him, nodding.

“… Already?”

“There’s a rare document in the next town over that I want to look into before my next job, and it’s not a bad walk. I’m actually surprised you’re still here, I would’ve expected you to stick with Nora and Kyleen.”

“They said they’d be on the move for a long time and it’d be hard.”

“Hmm.” Ging rubbed his hand across his stubble. “That’s true. Well, what _are_ you going to do, then? You can’t stay here after all that.”

Kite opened his mouth and closed it again, turning slightly pink beneath all the dirt. “I… I thought, if I was going to go with anyone…”

The gears shifted in Ging’s mind and he spluttered loudly, suddenly enough that Kite twitched back and his hands jerked up. “ _Absolutely_ not.”

Kite face fell with dismay and Ging groaned internally. He’d never been good at dealing with sad puppy eyes. “But you—you said—”

Ging crossed his arms and sighed, consternation creasing his brow. “Look, Kite, it’s one thing to keep in contact—I’ll do that if you want, gladly. But I can’t have someone who isn’t even trained to fight hanging around. I don’t have the patience for it.”

“I can fight, I’ve been fighting for years!” Kite protested.

“Hunting’s a serious job,” Ging said, turning his back and lifting a hand in farewell. “Especially when you reach the level I’m at. I can’t afford to bring anything with me that isn’t an asset. You’re pretty good at fighting but, frankly, don’t start thinking you’re anywhere near my league. I won’t spare the time to protect you if you trail behind me any farther than this, you got it? You’re responsible for yourself.”

“That’s fine. I’m used to that.” Kite caught up to him and walked sideways so he could face Ging and keep up at the same time. “You were impressed with what I could do, right? I could—I could get better at it and be useful to you, I just need to know how…”

He faltered as Ging snorted. “On the list of things I’m not, a teacher is right up there near the top. Look, you should just find an orphanage, somewhere safe you can grow up or whatever. I’ve got reservations to get to in the next town over and I can’t get slowed down. It’s gonna be a week’s walk where I’m going, and frankly I doubt you’d make it.”

Kite expression hardened with determination and he stopped walking, falling behind so that Ging had to glance over his shoulder to see him.

“I’ll make it,” Kite said firmly. “I’m not going to give up and I’m not going to slow you down. You’ll see.”

Ging raised his eyebrows as Kite turned on his heel and ran back to the crumbling buildings of the shantytown. “Ah, dammit,” he muttered under his breath, rubbing the back of his neck and setting off again with a bit more speed. If he walked fast enough, he’d probably be able to be out of sight before Kite got back.

Whether or not that would have been possible, of course, ended up being irrelevant when an hour after he reached the roadside town he’d been aiming for a small form was huddled in the street near the inn he was staying at. Ging ran his hand down his face, sighed heavily, and resigned himself to having the same conversation over and over.

 

 

Two days and yet another town changed little.

“Hey,” Ging said flatly, kneeling down by the side of a wide plank of wood laid across two garbage cans. It more or less functioned as shelter from the light rain. “I told you to go find an orphanage or something.”

Kite, curled up with his arms wrapped around his knees, met his annoyed glare stubbornly. “Yeah, you did.”

“And yet, here you are.”

“I said I wasn’t going to give up,” Kite said, shifting to sit cross-legged with his back straight and fold his arms across his chest, though that made his head press against the ‘roof’. “And I won’t. You said I should go somewhere safe, and as far as I can tell staying with you is safer than going anywhere else.”

“How the hell’d you come to that conclusion?”

“You’re stronger than anyone.”

Ging made a face. “Well. Okay, most people, sure. But those two, Nora and Kyleen, they’re pretty strong.”

“Not as strong as you. Besides, they have enough to worry about.”

“And I don’t??”

Kite paused and frowned. “If you were being chased down or something, you wouldn’t have interfered with the shantytown. Or spent three days walking through the countryside.”

“And if I’m just busy enough with work that I can’t look after a kid?”

“You don’t have to look after me, I can do that myself.” Kite leaned forward, an edge of desperation entering his voice. “I just want to come with you, that’s all—I can find food and everything, and you don’t even have to really teach me. I can just watch and learn it myself, and I could be useful…”

He was cut off as Ging pushed a plastic bag into his hands. “You got one thing right, and that’s that I don’t have to teach you and I’m not gonna. You’re better off asking people on the sidewalk to adopt you, honestly.”

Kite winced and looked down at the bag, tugging it open a bit. His eyes widened as he pulled out a to-go container and tore it open. Tiny wafts of steam floated up from the assorted pieces of chicken and green beans. For the split second between when he saw them and when he practically face-planted into the container he looked like he might cry.

“Right,” Ging said distantly, watching him scarf down half of it in a matter of seconds with a kind of fascinated disgust. “Uhh—okay, Kite, look, if you eat that fast you’re gonna be sick later… Oh god, don’t eat the bones, you’ll choke.”

All but three pieces of chicken were devoured in short order and Ging shook his head slowly as Kite licked the grease off of his hands. “Not going to finish it?” he asked wryly.

Kite pulled his fingers out of his mouth and scraped his jagged fingernails along the sides of the container for scraps. “Those’re for Socket Face.”

Ging straightened and looked down the alleyway, though there was nothing there but the two of them and a few extra planks of wood. “What, your dog? She’s still hanging around?”

“She can smell your trail,” Kite said, his voice slightly muffled because he was once more face-down in the container.

“Well I’m definitely not looking after a kid _and_ a dog,” Ging grumbled. “I’m sure she can look after herself, Kite, so just eat the rest of it.”

Kite squinted up at him. “If I eat it, will you take me with you?”

“Holy shit,” Ging said exasperatedly, and stood up. “Do whatever you want. Try and find a better place to sleep, it’s going to rain pretty hard tonight.”

 

 

“I’ve been asking for six days now,” Kite said quietly, scratching beneath Socket Face’s chin. “And he protests less every time. You’ve heard it, right? A lot less than at first. I think I’m making progress.”

Socket Face snuffled against his hands.

“If he really didn’t want me around, he wouldn’t keep giving me food. Right? That’s how I got all of you guys on my side. People don’t give food to things they don’t care about.”

A soft ‘woof’, perhaps of agreement.

“And if he was really mad because of me following him, he’d just make me stop. Or throw something. People usually throw things. I guess he doesn’t have anything to throw, though. But still. He’s put up with me this long, right?

“… But…

“I don’t think I can take care of you anymore…”

Socket Face whined and leaned forward to lick his cheek.

“I can’t go back. And Nora and Kyleen are gone, too, so w-where else…?

“…

“I don’t have a choice, girl… You’ll be fine, you can find your way back to Ecinev and sniff out food and everything. People like dogs, you could even find a home, I bet. Somewhere in the real town, though… Don’t get eaten or anything…”

She whined and he squeezed his arms around her.

“I’ll be okay, one way or another. And like I said, if I keep trying then I think he’ll cave.”

He fell silent for a moment, stroking his hand down her back.

“He will,” he said under his breath. “He will. So I need to go.”

Socket Face squirmed in his grip and twisted enough to lick his face again.

“I need to go,” Kite said again, making no move to leave. “I need to—I need to go...”

He sniffed loudly. Around the corner, leaning on the wall with his arms crossed and his head tilted back, Ging sighed internally and pushed his travel plans back another hour.

 

 

Cordre was a less sprawling city than Ecinev, but what it lacked in square mileage it made up for in height. The cluster of buildings in the center pierced the sky with their stylishly modern angular designs, towering above the outside neighborhoods by dozens of stories. Flashy advertisements hung off of the concrete and stone, flares of color that drew the eye and promised happiness.

Ging waited until he was in a part of the shopping district that was relatively empty of customers to turn around and call “Alright, come out.”

A dirty head poked around the corner of the building he was standing next to and swiveled, scanning their surroundings for threats. “Why’re you stopping here?” Kite asked warily, slipping out of his hiding spot and coming up to him. “There aren’t any hotels.”

“I’m staying at a place farther into the city,” Ging answered, looking down on him and ignoring the curious glances of passerby. Kite couldn’t ignore them and kept inching closer to the wall so he could put his back to it. “ _You_ are going to find a goddamn homeless shelter. I’m not putting up with this anymore.”

Kite stiffened and finally managed to focus entirely on Ging. “Wait—wait, I made it all the way here, doesn’t that count for anything? You said I couldn’t and I did, so even though you say I’d slow you down I, I could prove you wrong again. Um, not that I think I know better than you, but… I’m only alive now because I did better than people thought I could, so I’m used to it…”

He trailed off as Ging’s air of grumpy apathy dissipated into steeliness. “Listen. I’m not unsympathetic. If you want me to give you money or something, I’ll do it. You’re a talented kid and you’d go far if you decided to be a Hunter. But the places I’m going won’t be forgiving to people who hesitate to take someone’s life.” Kite’s mouth twisted and he glanced away. “It’s not a bad quality. Just not a good one for a Hunter to have.”

It was just as Ging turned to go again that Kite’s hand shot out and caught his sleeve in a death grip. At his raised eyebrow Kite swallowed and looked down at his hand.

“I can do it,” he said quietly, too quietly for anyone but Ging to hear. “I’ve done it before.”

Ging paused, appraising him carefully, reevaluating. “When?”

“Seven years ago, or around then. In the wet season.”

“Who was it?”

“I don’t know. One of the mob members.”

“What happened?”

Kite didn’t look away from where he was latched on to Ging’s shirt, practically spitting out his words with the speed he was speaking at. “I stole his wallet. He chased me. He was fast and I was already tired, it’s always harder to get food when the sewers flood, so when he caught up I couldn’t get away and my dogs had already scattered like I told them to and there were a lot of cinder blocks around because there were going to be houses there so when he went for me again I grabbed one and—and got him in the head with it.”

“And that’s when he died?” Ging asked lowly.

Kite swallowed hard and shook his head. “No. He didn’t die until I called the dogs back.”

Comprehension dawned on Ging’s face and he nodded slowly. Kite’s face twisted with nauseated shame and the words tripped painfully off his tongue.

“It’s hard for them too, when it rains. And it was easier to hide the body after.”

Ging carefully pulled his sleeve free. Kite jerked away from his hand as Ging reached out, but it only rested on his shoulder and he breathed out shakily, visibly making himself relax.

“If you want to travel with me,” Ging told him, searching his face, “you have to be prepared to see that, and worse than that, again.”

Kite closed his eyes for a second, shadows of fear and abhorrence flickering across his face, but as Ging squeezed his shoulder they resolved into resigned determination and he looked up again.

“I don’t want to kill anything. But if you say it’s necessary, I will.”

Ging’s expression had long since shifted from annoyance to deep interest, and now that interest intensified. “Why are you so determined to come with me? There’s a good chance you’ll die if you set one foot wrong.”

A smile tugged at Kite’s lips. “That’s nothing I’m not used to. And it’s not like it would matter anyway.”

Ging’s eyes narrowed. “No? You wouldn’t regret dying?”

Kite wavered, uncertain. Upon the gentle prompt of another squeeze to his shoulder he spoke again. “W-well, I wouldn’t be able to regret anything, since I’d be dead.”

“But in your last moments?”

He bit his lip nervously, choosing his words with deliberate care. “I’ve never been in a situation where making a mistake wouldn’t kill me. And more than anything, I don’t want to die. So I would regret it, but I think…” He looked up to Ging, searching. “It’s better to die as a Hunter than as prey, isn’t it?”

Ging examined his expression meticulously, a satisfied smile slowly spreading through his own. Kite flinched, surprised, as Ging let go of his shoulder and put his hand on top of Kite’s head again.

“It could be kind of fun having someone trailing after me, I guess” he said, adopting an air of overdone blitheness. “If you think you can keep up.”

The tension that Kite was staring at Ging’s arm with faded into a shocked blankness that was eclipsed by a relieved, joyous smile. “I will,” he promised, leaning into Ging’s hand happily as the unease drained out of his frame. “I won’t let you down, master, I promise.”

“Wow,” Ging said. “Okay, first lesson: don’t call me that.”

“… Sir?”

“Stick with Ging, alright… Pff, master if you’re feeling particularly sycophantic.”

 

 


	2. Clothes Make the Man

 

 

 

“Okay,” Ging said, pausing by the side of a clothing store. “First thing’s first. You’re getting clean.”

“… Sure. Where?”

Ging pointed to a tall building two blocks away with walls that were largely shining glass. “I’ve got a room booked at that hotel, so you can use the shower there. But it’s a kinda upscale place, and I’ll have to rearrange my plans since you’re tagging along, so it’ll be for the best if you don’t look like you had a bad wrestling match with a thorn bush. It’d be a hassle to explain.”

Kite glanced down at his coat self-consciously. It’d lasted him a long time and seen its fair share of rips and tears. More than what was fair, maybe. It certainly looked grubby, especially since the dogs had liked to sleep on it too. Wearing it into any shop, even in one in the poorer neighborhoods, was a fast way to get kicked out and chased off. “I have cleaner clothes.”

“Yeah? Why aren’t you wearing them?”

“I only wear them when I have to take stuff from inside a store,” Kite explained, watching the passerby in earshot carefully to make sure they weren’t listening. “It takes longer for people to notice that way.”

Ging grinned. “Clever. Well, we can drop in here for a minute and you can change into them.”

Kite blinked in confusion for a second before Ging jerked his head toward the store they stood beside. “Here. This one.”

“But…” Kite’s brow furrowed. Clothing stores were harder to get out of since clothes were harder to hide than whatever he could fit in his coat pockets.

He didn’t have more than a second to hesitate before Ging grabbed him by the arm and dragged him into the store. “Listen. Whatever happened before, you’re with me now. It’ll be fine.”

“Welcome! What can I… uh…” The worker at the door greeted them cheerfully before they noticed the condition of Kite’s clothes and hair and faltered. “… hmm. What are you looking for in here?” They said it in such a pointed way that there couldn’t be any doubt they were actually asking why he’d thought he’d be welcome.

“Just browsing,” Ging replied breezily, striding past them without missing a beat. “We won’t need your help, thanks.”

Kite had to hide a shocked laugh behind his hand, twisting to look back at the worker’s offended face. He’d never gotten this far into a nice shop before, except for the rare times all the workers had been distracted and he could sneak in. But those forays only lasted a few minutes before they’d found him. It was weird—in a good way—to think that they couldn’t throw him out. That he was actually a real, legitimate customer.

Well, Ging was a customer, since he was the one with the money. Kite was a customer by extension.

He kept twisting his head around to see as much of the place as possible as Ging made a beeline for the dressing rooms. Kite stayed close by, of course, but a few times he lingered and dared to trace his fingers across a shirt with an intricate, beautiful design; a skirt made of smooth, soft cloth; a pure white jacket. Ecinev had been so dismal, all dust and mud and rusted metal, but already he felt he was standing in a different world.

Ging cleared his throat and Kite’s attention snapped back to him. He hurried over and ducked past him into the hall with all the rooms branching off from it. When he glanced over Ging didn’t look annoyed at the delay, so he relaxed slightly and slipped inside.

The dressing room’s lights were a blinding white that threw all the colors in the small space into sharp relief. The dirt caked into Kite’s coat—and the dirt that was constantly crumbling off of the soles of his shoes onto the clean floor—was all the more obvious under them. He was still too uneasy to relax fully, fully aware of the tightrope he had to walk to seem acceptable, even with Ging’s protection. He dropped his bag to the floor unceremoniously and shrugged off his coat, half-turning, and jerked back against the door with a thud as movement caught his eye and he recognized the shape of a person in the room with him. He was already fumbling for the door handle when he realized it was just a mirror.

He breathed out slowly, pressing a hand to his chest. His heart was racing. Steadily he moved forward, watching with some fascination as the mirror copied him. He’d seen his reflection before, of course, in glass windows and puddles and pieces of clean metal. But this mirror was clear, well-lit, designed for no purpose but to show the looker their own body. He traced his fingers across the lines of his face with no small wonder.

Kyleen had called him a little ghost, sometimes, and he could see why; he’d carefully planned which clothes to snatch months ago, getting them a little too big so he could wear them for a long time as he grew, and as a result they still draped over this limbs as they would an empty clothes hanger. When he’d spared the thought for it he’d been grateful not to have much meat on his bones, but seeing himself now he realized he was even thinner than he’d expected. Not shocking, considering how much he’d managed to eat lately, but it was easy to see why the nickname had stuck. The combination of his lankiness and his wild off-white hair made him look half dead.

A door across the hall from him creaked open and he started. There were too many distractions in this place for him to feel comfortable. It was too easy to let his guard down. He resolved to change quickly and leave. No matter how alluring the displays were, it was only a matter of time before the dream bubble popped.

Ging wasn’t standing at the end of the hall anymore when he exited the dressing room, his clean clothes donned and his coat stuffed away into his bag. Kite scanned the store from the corner nervously, sighing in relief when he spotted Ging’s distinctive hairstyle by the far wall. He stayed firm in his decision not to get caught up in admiring the luxurious clothing as he came back to Ging, even if a pang of regret went through his chest when a particularly nice article brushed by in his periphery vision.

Ging looked up as he approached and scanned him up and down. “Good enough. Hold still for a second.”

Kite couldn’t help but stiffen instinctually as Ging reached for him but stayed where he was. A weight settled on his head and a shadow fell across his face as Ging tugged the brim of a newsboy cap down onto his forehead.

“There,” Ging muttered, stepping back. “That fits okay.”

Kite lifted the brim a little bit and tilted his head. “Uh. Yes, it does.” He took it off and looked down at it, befuddled but admiring its shade of blue.

Ging took it out of his hands before he could ask why it had been put on his head and made for the register. “I’ll get this, then, and we can go.”

It was logically clear what Ging meant to do with the hat but Kite couldn’t actually bring himself to believe it until it had been handed back to him, free of tags. “This is—this is mine?”

“Yeah,” Ging said, shoving the receipt into his pocket.

The idea couldn’t quite click. Kite put the hat on his head in a stupor, running his hands over it and holding it down. “You’re _giving_ it to me?”

“… Yeah?” Ging repeated. “You like it, right?”

“Yes!” Kite said quickly, pulling the brim down until it almost covered his eyes. He blinked rapidly until his vision cleared up again. “Yes. I—I like it. I really like it. Thank you.”

Ging stayed silent until Kite sniffed and looked up again a moment later. “Good,” he said, grinning crookedly. “I got some hair ties, too. It’s gonna be a good idea to put your hair up under it, at least while we’re in the lobby.”

He tossed Kite a pack of elastic hair bands, all clean and stiffly fresh. They were all designed with dancing swirls of color, unrestrained rainbows that lengthened into arcs as the hair tie was pulled. Kite took one and stretched it across his fingers, a small smile playing across his lips. “Okay.”

 

\--

 

The hotel lobby was even more intimidating than the clothing store had been. Kite had to resist the urge to rub at the dirt on his neck that wasn’t hidden behind his equally dirty hair anymore. The disapproving looks levelled at him from the bellhops and other customers had him hunching his shoulders, instinctively shrinking, and sticking to Ging’s arm like glue. Ging didn’t comment but to mutter that he’d need both hands back when they got to the receptionist.

“Hello,” the woman at the counter said pleasantly, her smile faltering slightly when she saw Kite half-hiding behind Ging. “… Are you here to check in…?”

“Yes, it’s reserved under Freecss,” Ging said, tugging his arm out of Kite’s grip and leaning forward onto the counter. “But I’ll need to make a few changes.”

“Oh. Oh, Mr. Freecss!” she exclaimed, blushing to the roots of her hair and backpedaling to her welcoming demeanor. “I didn’t realize. I’ll certainly help however I can.”

Ging made a noncommittal sound. “Right. Anyway, I had reserved one of the top floor rooms, but I’m going to need two rooms, uh—queen size beds. Next to each other, with a connecting door if possible.”

The woman and Kite both stared at him. “I’m sorry,” the woman said, adjusting her glasses, “you want to _down_ grade?”

“That’s what I said. Are there any available?”

She sputtered for a second before regaining her composure and reaching for the keyboard. “I’ll just have to check, sir, if you don’t mind waiting.”

Ging grunted in assent and leaned on the counter with one elbow. He noticed Kite still staring at him and raised his eyebrows. Kite looked away quickly and examined the lobby instead. There were a lot of people in fancy suits chatting in plush chairs by a crackling fireplace, other people in uniforms weaving between them and occasionally leaning down to speak quietly to them. Sometimes one would bring out a plate of food and set it down in front of the rich people, who would glance up briefly and then return to their conversations. They didn’t even eat all the food, Kite noted with no small irritation. And places like this for clod sniffers would dump the leftovers down the sink rather than put it out in the trash, so not even animals could finish it off

His fingers twitched with bitter envy and he wished he could put his hands in his coat pockets. It would be easier to resist the urge to snatch something expensive off a table out of sheer spite. But he wasn’t going to test the limits of Ging’s patience, that was for sure. He idly made plans for grabbing something and bolting out the nearest window all the same, since it made for an amusing mental image. All the people with their noses in the air would shriek and leap up from their seats, their faces turning puce with rage. Someone’d probably get cut up by glass—other than him, that was—and bleed on something white. Then their clothes would be just as wasted as their meals.

Ging tapped him on the shoulder and Kite jumped, twisting around to look up at him. Ging waved their room keys in the air and made for the elevator. Kite trailed after him, disconcerted by how often he’d been caught off-guard in the last hour. It was all so much to take in all at once, but surprises still made him tense and twitchy and for the third time he resolved to stay vigilant no matter how nice it felt not to. He just wasn’t used to being distracted by luxuries, that was all. He could adjust quickly and then he’d be fine.

The elevator doors closed and Kite managed not to stumble as the room began moving.

“Hey,” Ging asked suddenly, “do you know what this is?” At Kite’s blank look he gestured vaguely at the little room and the wall of buttons.

“An elevator.”

“You’ve been in one before?”

“No,” Kite said, shifting his weight from foot to foot uneasily. The disembodied weight on his shoulders was making it hard not to try and bolt for an exit. Even though there wasn’t even an exit at all. “I’m not allowed in buildings rich enough for elevators. But I’ve read about them.”

Ging nodded slowly, rubbing his stubble idly with his free hand. “Huh. I take it you stole the books.”

Kite nodded, grabbing onto the cylindrical rail impulsively beside him as the elevator abruptly slowed and his whole body got lighter. A distorted voice above his head said “Floor eight” mildly and Kite slipped through the doors as soon as they’d opened wide enough for him to fit through. Ging followed a second later, watching him with amusement.

“We can take the stairs next time if you prefer.”

“It’s fine,” Kite muttered, casting the elevator a sidelong glance even as he said it.

Ging shrugged and tossed him one of the key packets, a paper envelope with an ornate design with a stiff card inside it. Kite turned it over in his hands as they walked through the halls, confused by how a card was supposed to be a key. All cards were shaped the same, so wouldn’t any card open all of the locks?

His question was answered as they arrived at a pair of doors and Ging slid his card into a large box above the handle. A green light flicked on when he pulled it out and he opened the door, holding it with his foot and glancing back at Kite expectantly.

The first time he tried it, putting the card carefully into the box, a red light and a buzzer came on. It was the same the second time, and the third. He looked to Ging for some kind of explanation, but Ging just watched him silently. Kite had the distinctly tense feeling that he was being tested on something. Before he tried again he recalled what Ging had done differently, frowning down at the card before he slid it in and pulled it out more quickly.

The green light flicked on and Kite smiled proudly, opening the door a crack. He looked left to Ging, who was grinning; he’d passed, whatever it was he was supposed to be proving. Kite’s shoulders dropped with relief and he opened the door a little wider, peeking into the room.

The sight drove the test out of his mind entirely. A thin hall led from the door into a spacious room, where there was enough space between the side of the bed and the wall that if Kite lay down lengthwise between them they wouldn’t even touch his shoulders. The bed itself was as wide as he was tall and much thicker, laden with pillows and covers. Opposite from the door, a crystal-clear window without a single smudge on it opened up onto a view of the nearby park. To his left a closet with a folding door standing slightly ajar had an unbelievably fluffy robe hanging in it; to the right was another door. Probably a bathroom, Kite managed to think through his shock. Probably the fanciest bathroom he’d ever see in his life.

“You can go in, you know,” Ging commented dryly. “It’s your room.”

Kite opened his mouth to protest that that wasn’t possible but Ging leaned over and shoved him forward so that Kite stumbled into the room. He immediately spun and caught the door, holding onto it like a lifeline. For a few seconds nothing happened. Kite wasn’t sure exactly what he was waiting for. To wake up, maybe. But nothing continued to happen and little by little he eased away from the doorway. The sound of Ging’s door closing with a click bounced through the hall and a second later there was a knock from behind Kite, just past the closet.

“These doors unlock,” Ging called through, “so when you’re done having an existential crisis open up your side so we can decide what to do next.”

Kite wasn’t sure what an “existential crisis” was, but he did spend a few minutes just letting hot water pour over his hands from the bathroom sink and Ging eventually got impatient and knocked again.

“Here’s my plan,” Ging said the second Kite opened his side of the connecting door. “You stay here and get clean. As clean as you can. Hair wash and everything. I’m going to go out and pick up some stuff you’ll need, like clothes and a toothbrush and whatever. It shouldn’t take long, so if I get back before you’re done I’ll leave the stuff on your bed. If you’re done first, don’t put these clothes back on. There’s a robe in the closet, that’ll do, but putting on those again will just undo all the work of getting clean in the first place. Make sense?”

Kite blinked slowly, digesting the information. “Yes.”

“Alright.” Ging clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Get cracking, then.”

He was out the door before Kite had a chance to protest or ask questions.

 

\--

 

Kite regained some of his lost pride in his own self-discipline since he managed not to sink into the bath until he’d scrubbed himself off thoroughly with a hotel-provided set of soap and some kind of rough cloth in a circular shape. He spent a while struggling with the tangles in his hair, as well, but gave up when it became clear that he wouldn’t be making any progress anytime soon. The most he could do was run water through it and hope that that washed away most of the dirt and oil.

When he poked his head out the bathroom door, his hair dripping large puddles onto the carpet in the hall, there was a bag sitting on his bed with a logo he recognized from the store they’d gone into and a smaller plastic bag leaning against it. Ging’s side of the connecting door was closed and Kite quickly got dry enough to tie his hair up again and curl up in the fluffy robe. It was significantly softer and cleaner than anything he’d worn in years and he buried his face in the collar for a second before sitting on the bed and pulling out the pieces of clothing one by one, laying them out in front of himself.

Most were plainly colored and made of smooth, stretchy material; clothes that would be easy to move around in and clean. There was a long coat similar in color to the torn-up one in his bag and that had a small pocket on the inner left side. None of them had the fancy adornment that had so caught his eye in the store, but he didn’t think he would have felt comfortable wearing those anyway. They seemed more delicate than could survive for long in the dirt. Not to mention that as he caught sight of the price tag on the coat he felt slightly lightheaded and decided that he couldn’t hope for more than what he’d been given. The coat alone was more expensive than anything he’d ever touched, let alone worn. He wasn’t about to push his luck.

The matter was more or less resolved anyway when, at the bottom of the bag, he discovered the sleek skirt he’d eyed on the rack.

It was tall enough that it would fall almost down to his ankle and on one side a slit would reach up to the knee. He stood and held it up with awe. The only skirts in the slums were stitched together out of scraps of other fallen-apart clothes, and only people who could through one means or another protect themselves wore them. Skirts like the one in his hands were for people who lived in houses, who went to _restaurants_.

Putting it on felt slightly scandalous and he giggled privately to himself as he spun around and felt it curl around his legs.

 

 

 

“Nice,” Ging noted a half hour later when Kite had carefully folded each article of clothing and returned them to the bag, save for a shirt that draped off of his gaunt frame and more or less hid it and a pair of thick socks. He had to put his old, worn-down shoes on over them and, remembering what Ging had said about staying clean, felt more than a little guilty about it. “I got some basic stuff—floss, et cetera—but it’s not gonna be enough. I put together a list of supplies for you to run out and buy while there’s still daylight left.”

Kite took the paper Ging was holding out and slowly read over the contents. A haircut; two pairs of running shoes; a heavy coat that could handle a blizzard; a bag that could carry everything he needed in one place…

Ging rubbed his chin uncertainly as Kite stared at the list. “Uh. Hang on, you can write, right?”

“What? Yes,” Kite said, startled. “Owl taught me.”

“Phew,” Ging sighed, relaxing. “Well, that’s good.”

“I never needed to write anything, though.” Ging frowned slightly and Kite hastened to add, “But I know how, so I could do it, I’d just need practice.”

“Good enough for now. Any questions about the list?”

“… What do I need these for?”

He leaned back as Ging leaned forward to see what he was pointing at. “The pajamas? Uh, well, I didn’t buy any.”

“Right, but why buy them at all? I already have clothes.”

Ging hummed under his breath and straightened, staring into the distance for a long moment. Kite jumped when he suddenly looked down on him again. “Pajamas are nice, that’s why.”

The answer didn’t really help, but Kite accepted it anyway rather than press the issue. He still wanted to ask _so what_ , but having pajamas was probably something people with money did. “Okay. How will I pay for everything?”

“I’ve got cash,” Ging said blithely and ducked through the connecting door to stride over to his bag. He pulled something out and quickly returned. As he came closer Kite realized that in his hand was a huge wad of bills the same size as his fist and nearly had a heart attack.

Dramatics aside, he did wobble on his feet as a wave of lightheadedness hit him. “Oh,” he said weakly, the paper shaking in his hands. He couldn’t quite find words through the shock, but he did make a mental note of where Ging had pulled the money out from. “That. That’s a lot. Of money.”

Ging’s hands were halfway outstretched toward him and his eyebrows were nearly at his hairline. “Are you okay??”

Kite stepped back, his knees wobbly, and sat down in his room’s desk chair. “Fine,” he said, his voice pitched higher than usual. “I’m fine. Everything’s fine.” He thought about actually holding the money in his hands and a wild thrill ran through his stomach. “Can I… Um, how should I carry it…?”

Still looking more than a little bit alarmed, Ging indicated the clothing bag with his thumb. “That coat I got has an inner pocket that would work, at least until you get a wallet at some point or other.”

It would be for the best, Kite decided, to talk about something else. Owning a wallet that hadn’t been taken from the pocket of some faceless passerby was _definitely_ something for rich people. As overwhelming as it was to imagine, it was also clandestinely pleasing. “Right. Uh, where do I go to get all this?”

Ging shrugged. “Hell if I know. The receptionist could probably tell you where the shopping mall is. I’ll be busy setting up appointments for you, so I can’t help on that front.”

Steadily Kite’s heartbeat slowed and he could focus normally again. “Appointments?”

“Health stuff,” Ging said vaguely and unhelpfully. “Don’t worry about it yet.”

Kite’s consternation must have shown on his face because Ging sat down heavily on the bed. “Look, I know this isn’t going to be easy for you. But frankly, I’m not a patient guy, so if you’re serious about traveling with me you’re going to have to adapt quickly. Probably a lot more quickly than is comfortable. But I wouldn’t be giving you this list if I didn’t think you could do it.”

It was still a foreign feeling to be complimented, but a nice one. It melted away his lingering uncertainty and he straightened up in his seat, nodding seriously. “I won’t let you down.”

The corner of Ging’s mouth quirked up into a lopsided smile. “I’m sure you won’t. If that’s all, I’d recommend we both get moving.”

It was all, except that Ging caught his arm just as he was steeling himself to step out the door. “Hey, Kite, wait. You know, if you go out in that skirt people’ll probably think you’re a girl.”

Kite blinked slowly, looking between the skirt and Ging confusedly. “Okay?”

Ging paused, suddenly thoughtful. “ _Are_ you a girl? Nora and Kyleen used he/him pronouns, so I assumed, but you’ve got the last word.”

“On what?” Kite asked, getting more bewildered by the second. “Nora and Kyleen talked about me?”

“Uh, yes. Several times.” Ging’s brow furrowed at the disbelieving expression on Kite’s face. “And the last word on what pronouns you want to use. Like he, him, his; she, her, hers; they, them, theirs; et cetera.”

“… Huh.” Kite adjusted his hat, which his hair was re-pinned under. “I… never really thought about it. I didn’t talk to anybody but the dogs.”

Ging rested his cheek in the palm of his hand and regarded him. “Hmm. Well, if you don’t like it when people refer to you as a girl, then we’ll have an answer.”

“I suppose,” Kite said doubtfully. “… Do I have to pick one?”

“One set of pronouns? Nah, use as many as you like.”

Kite nodded slowly, contemplating the issue. Dogs didn’t particularly care about the gender of humans. But humans cared, so he should probably care too. “I’ll think about it.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

 

\--

 

The woman at the reception desk didn’t look pleased to see him. “Can I help you?” she said, a mocking curl to the question.

Without Ging by his side, the sidelong stares of the staff and the rich were much heavier. They had lessened in number now that he was clean and had a fancy coat on, but the hair on the back of his neck still stood up with the need to hide.

“I need to find a—” he faltered for a second, searching for the word. “A hair… cutter?”

“A stylist?” the receptionist offered snidely. “There are a few in the area. I take it you want a map?” Kite nodded and she sneered like he’d asked her to cut his hair herself. “I’ll put some clear directions on it for you, sweetie.”

The condescension dripping off her tone was just what he’d expect from clod sniffers. Perhaps it was too much to ask that a change of clothes be all that was necessary to blend in with such a judgmental crowd, especially since they’d already seen him ragged and filthy. It irritated him to admit it, but clear directions would be pretty useful since he had no idea where he was going. The receptionist’s pen squeaked as she scribbled on a map of the area surrounding the hotel, haphazardly indicating a route.

“There you go, hurry along now,” she said, pushing it over the counter. Kite was tempted to take the glossy black pen right out of her fingers and pawn it for a few Jenny that would actually go toward something useful. But that wouldn’t accomplish anything but getting him kicked out, so he just picked up the map and left without another word.

From behind him came the sound of a dismissive snort and he decided that, as he’d expected, all rich people were terrible.

 

\--

 

Kite lingered on the opposite side of the street from the salon for almost an hour, running his hand over the lump of money in his inner pocket at least once every few minutes. It was a bad idea, he knew, and would only attract attention, but he couldn't help but doubt its existence every time he wasn't feeling the evidence with his own hands. He'd never had any money to look after, let alone this much. So while the thought of going into shops and actually legitimately buying things made a spark of excitement flash through his chest he also held back, reining himself in every time he got close to crossing the street at last. It was hard to imagine that he wouldn't be dragged out by the scruff of his neck if he so much as set foot in there. But the weight of Ging's money was reassuringly heavy and he'd be hauled off for loitering soon enough anyway, so finally he took a deep breath and crossed over to go in.

The woman at the counter looked up from her calendar as he entered, a bell over the door tinkling. "Hi, can I help you?" she asked, looking slightly bemused as Kite stared at the room openly, stiffly.

He looked at her for a long second, warily waiting for her to recognize something and tell him to get out, possibly throwing the paperweight on the desk. It looked decently heavy. But she only raised her eyebrows and glanced at the door.

"... Are you here on your own?"

Kite suppressed a snort. As if he'd tell her something like _that_. She looked even more confused as he didn't answer and scanned her calendar. "Um, we don't have any appointments right now, so... I could fit you in... ?"

The cleanliness of the room was disconcerting after so much time spent in dust and dirt. Kite shifted his weight uneasily and nodded, little more than a jerk of his head, keeping his arms pressed to his sides so that he didn't touch anything. Even with his new clothes he couldn't shake the feeling that years of accumulated filth were visible nonetheless. It would be easier if he could actually say something, he knew it was more or less safe to tell her what he wanted, but...

He balled his hands into fists. Ging had said it himself that Kite would have to adapt quickly, more quickly than was comfortable. And he'd agreed, so he wouldn't falter at the starting gate.

"Yes," he made himself say, "I'd like- thank you, I'd like to get a haircut." Having said it, he reflexively brought his hand up in front of him, laying it on the concealed Jenny. "I can pay for it!"

The woman smiled quizzically at him and stood, her chair rolling aside, to walk around the edge of the desk. Kite didn't move but to watch her tensely, ready to bolt.

"Alright, then," she said, gesturing to one of the chairs facing a large mirror and surrounded by all kinds of instruments and strangely colored bottles. "Feel free to sit and I'll get you started."

She was taking things much more in stride than he was, and while it probably took a bit too long for him to take off and hang up his hat and coat, let down his hair, and traverse the space over to the seat, she didn't rush him. He jumped and froze in place when she called to someone in the back room before he realized on the heels of the sentence that she was telling them to take over the register and that he wasn't in danger.

"Seriously?" a man yelled back, and his footsteps tromped closer until he could poke his head into the room. "Oh, hi, I didn't think we'd get anybody in today. You're taking her, Sara?"

Sara nodded, laying a hand on the shoulder of Kite's chair. He made himself not twitch away from it, adamantly telling himself over and over that he had the money, so he had the right to be here. No one could kick him out if he could pay. Ging had given him money for that reason, so it was fine. Sara spread a thick blanket over his shoulders that covered everything below his neck, and which he accepted as a sort of shield to hide how tightly his hands were clenched onto the armrests.

"So, what are you thinking?" Sara asked brightly. Kite watched her every movement in the mirror, bracing himself when she began combing her fingers through his hair. Her eyebrows shot up and she tugged weakly to free her fingers from the complicated knots. "O-oh, um, wow. Your hair is really long. And such a nice color!"

Kite still wasn't used to looking at himself much, but it was hard to miss how the reflection of his face flushed. "Sorry," he muttered, looking down at his hidden lap. "That's. Why I'm here."

Truly professional, Sara rolled with the punches yet again. "I see. Hmm, well, you've got a bit of a bird's nest going here. I'll do my best to detangle it, but... How long's it been since your last cut?"

It was such a casual, earnest question that Kite felt it would be too telling for him to say the true answer, which was 'my whole life'. "A while," he said instead.

"... Okay," Sara said. "Well, there are a lot of split ends as well, so if you're alright with it it would be a good idea to cut those off. Do you want your hair to stay at a certain length?"

Kite squinted at his hair thoughtfully. At the moment it hung unevenly, the longest points reaching the small of his back. Clean, its shade of white was actually sort of nice. “Um. As long as possible.”

Sara hummed and carefully ran her fingers through it again, measuring where the most stubbornly Gordian knots were. “I think it’ll be best to cut it just here—“ She pulled a strand between her index and middle finger down until she could indicate a spot just below his shoulders. “Then it’ll still be long, but short enough that it’ll stay healthy for a while longer. Is that good?”

Kite nodded and she smiled. “Great. I’ll get started, then.”

She cut out the tangles first, resulting in a jagged mess of hair that one could actually manage to pull their fingers through without getting trapped. Kite stayed statue-still as the quiet sound of her scissors passed by his ears. It went against every single instinct he had to let someone near his head with a sharp object and before long his fingers started aching with how tightly he was gripping the armrests. The preliminary trim only took a few minutes, though, before she moved him over to a sink and he had to switch to suppressing the urge to melt into her hands as she poured warm water over his hair and massaged shampoo through it.

“Yeah, everybody likes this part,” Sara said under her breath, smiling-upside down as she leaned over him. “I don’t think I caught whether you were on your own?”

Kite stiffened, but now that he thought about it human people probably wouldn’t have to worry about that kind of thing. All the same, he edged around the question. “I’m running errands.”

“Like what?” Sara asked interestedly, carefully using a faucet to rinse out the bubbles from Kite’s hair. The pleasantly fruity scent wafted up with the gentle spray and Kite breathed in deeply. “And how did your hair get so messy in the first place, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Picking up travel supplies,” Kite echoed from Ging’s earlier description. “… Is my hair going to smell like that?”

She grinned and pumped conditioner into her hand. “Like it? We just got a shipment of this stuff, it’s pretty top-of-the-line. I think it’ll really help getting your hair healthy again. Hmm—if you like, you could buy a bottle for yourself. We’ve got plenty.”

The slick feeling of the conditioner made him hesitate for a second, but in the end he said “I shouldn’t.”

“How come?”

“I haven’t picked up everything on my list yet.”

“Ah, that makes sense. Well, if you change your mind later today or anything, we’ll be open until six.”

They subsided back into silence as she rinsed out his hair one last time and brought him back over in front of the mirror.

“Here, right?” she asked, indicating the length they’d agreed on. He nodded and she set to work, occasionally asking technical questions—did he want layers, bangs, any particular styling. More often than not he deferred to whatever she thought would be best. It was bad enough keeping his head in place when the scissors were at the back of his neck, let alone when they were directly in front of his face. Though she didn’t comment, she must have picked up on his intense discomfort because she barely styled his bangs at all. The rest of his hair, however, was carefully arranged into a U-shape down his back.

Past the immediate threat of the scissors, it was unnerving to see himself looking so drastically different. He’d almost forgotten that his hair wasn’t a dull shade of grey-brown. And though his bangs could still almost fall in front of his eyes, she swept them to the sides and he could see how the brim of his cap would keep it out of his face.

“There we go,” Sara said with satisfaction as she did one final pass with a loud instrument shaped vaguely like a gun that had given him a scare when she first turned it on. “Good as new! Do you want me to make any last changes?”

Kite examined himself, slowly tilting his head around. It felt strangely light and even without touching it he could tell it was smooth. “That’s good,” he said vaguely, shifting in his seat just to confirm that it was actually himself he was looking at. Not for the first time he wondered how it could be possible that he looked so normal. He wouldn’t even stand out in a crowd, probably. In the back of his mind he made a note that it would be easier to pick pockets now, something he hadn’t had much luck with before but knew how to do. Logically speaking he wouldn’t need to, but all the same it was good to have a backup plan.

“Alright!” Sara said, beaming, and unhooked the long blanket from around his neck to sweep it off dramatically. “I’ll ring you up, then, just a second…”

She stepped away and Kite ran his hand over the wad of money one more time, just in case. It was still there. “How much is it?” he called over his shoulder, watching her reflection tapping buttons at the register.

“It comes out to four thousand Jenny, if you’re not getting the shampoo or conditioner.” She looked up at him hopefully. “Are you sure you won’t get them? Everything we’ve heard says they work wonders, even just this wash added a lot of shine and volume.”

It was for the best that Ging had sent him off with a specific list and limited funds, Kite thought, because he really had never dealt with having an _over_ abundance of money to spend. Left to his own devices, he probably would have just bought all the things he wanted. It was an intoxicating thought that he actually had the ability to do so.

And yet, on the verge of declining once more, he reached up and carded his fingers through his hair. As they slid uninterrupted from his ear to his chest, without being covered in oil or dirt, without encountering something unpleasantly sticky that was probably dog saliva, he lost the ability to think in shock. It was really nice. He had to swallow hard to push back the lump in his throat, it was so nice.

“… How much would they be?” he asked, his heart racing suddenly.

Sara grinning and tapped a few more buttons. “Both of them would bump it up to nine thousand.”

Ging had given him a hundred thousand, Kite thought, so nine wouldn’t put that much more of a dent in it compared to four. Five was nothing when he had that much money, so if he was careful with the rest of the purchases he’d almost certainly have enough to get through the day, and…

“Okay,” he said impulsively, spinning and making a beeline for his coat before he could change his mind. “Okay, I’ll get them.”

“Great! I’ll go grab them from the back, just a second.”

Kite was grateful for her temporary absence, as it gave him a chance to extract the wad of Jenny and rapidly count out nine thousand before stuffing it back in its hidden pocket. Even if he was surrounded by normal humans, it was still a good idea not to let anybody know where one kept their cash.

 

\--

 

Ging glanced up and took in the various bags Kite was holding. "Oh, you're back. Is that all the stuff you got?"

Kite nodded, putting them down carefully by the— _his_ —room’s desk. Ging held out a hand and Kite passed him the list, on which various items had been scratched out as he'd made his way.

"Got a set of gloves, got boots, got a wallet..." Ging muttered, tapping his fingers on the desk. "Hmm, okay. I wasn't expecting you to get through this much stuff. Not that I'm complaining, it certainly makes things easier on me."

Kite smiled slightly and glanced at his new belongings, all still bearing their price tags and wrapping. "Nobody yelled at me," he recounted, still pleasantly surprised by his success. "It was nice."

Ging snorted. "Yeah, money has that effect. Ah, you got that haircut, too. Looks nice."

Kite ran a hand through his smooth, clean hair self-consciously. It had seemed alright at the time, but uncertainty hovered in his mind as he recalled the luxurious purchase of the set of shampoo and conditioner. It went against his instinct not to hide it, but it wasn't as if he could actually fool Ging for long when they’d be traveling together. The more he thought about it the more it seemed better to own up rather than be discovered. "Master," he said, quickly amending himself when Ging squinted at him in an annoyed way. "I mean, Ging. I know you gave me the money for necessities, and I used it for that, but, um, there was another thing I got, as well, and once I have any money I can pay you back for it if you want-"

"What was it?" Ging cut in, raising an eyebrow amusedly.

It didn't take long for Kite to explain, though he trailed off near the end as it became more and more evident that Ging found the story hilarious. He was snorting into his hand by the time that Kite actually said that it was the pair of hair products. "Oh boy, Kite, you're gonna have to do some adjusting for sure," he managed to choke out. Kite's face heated up and he turned his face to glare at the shopping bags, running his fingers through his hair again.

"I thought you'd want to know what happened to your money," he muttered, "and it wasn't on the list of things you told me to get..."

Ging caught his breath and sat back in his chair, shaking his head. "Well, I'm glad you told me, but seriously-" He visibly suppressed another laugh. "It's just so funny for you to be worried about it. You saw the price tags on the clothes you’re wearing, right?"

As if he could forget. Kite felt his face get redder as he recalled the numbers, how each would have dwarfed the bill on the receipts he'd gotten on their own. But numbers on paper had seemed so abstract compared to the things he had in his hands, and the physical bills he'd been given were so worryingly finite.

Ging pointed in the direction of the bags. "Listen. I could buy a million each of those bottles and frankly it wouldn't even make much of a dent in my savings."

Just thinking about it made Kite's head reel again, though he kept a hold on himself this time. "Right," he said, slightly breathily. "Well. It's... fine, then?"

"Yeah," Ging said, shaking his head as his shoulders trembled with silent laughter. "It's fine, Kite. Buy as much shampoo as you want."

Kite nudged the shopping bags with his foot and felt his face heat up as Ging fought to regain his composure. “I only want this one,” he grumbled under his breath.

“It was from the hairstylist, right? How’d that whole thing go?”

“It was…” Kite ran his fingers through his hair. “Worrying. But sort of nice.”

“Worrying?"

Half-suspecting that he was going to be laughed at again Kite examined Ging’s face for traces of mirth, but found only a straightforward interest. For several days he’d felt off-balance, out of his depth; the shopping hadn’t helped with that, but the main issue was that it was hard to swallow the thought that somebody cared about his existence. It was an unfamiliar feeling, though not an unpleasant one. “… Scissors,” he said, and hoped it would suffice.

“Ah.” Something made the corner of Ging’s mouth twitch up again and Kite frowned preemptively.

“What?”

“I was just thinking that if having your hair cut was that bad, you’re going to hate the dentist.”

 

\--

 

He hated the dentist.

He’d had a lot of harrowing experiences in his time. Not all the stray dogs were willing to be tamed. Fewer among the gutter muck were kind enough to turn a blind eye on him. Panic was nothing new, even in its most violent form of blood rushing in his ears and the certainty that death was looming, waiting. But then, at least, he had been able to run away. No one but Ging had been able to catch him in all his years, not with adrenaline and _Nen_ both giving him more endurance than the adults on his tail. A small, prideful part of him insisted quietly that he could have gotten away from Ging, too, maybe, if it wasn’t for how it had been years and years since anyone but a dog had laid a finger on him. He’d risked sneaking further into town, the real town, than was safe sometimes so that he could watch people go by from the shadows and feel a vicarious ease from the loneliness that had been chewing away at him since Owl’s death. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had reached out to him without the intent to harm.

So when the man with a mask across his face tried to do what Kite could only interpret as stabbing him in the mouth, it took less than five seconds for him to panic hard enough to kick over the stand holding the other pointy metal weapons, bite the man’s hand hard enough that the metallic taste of blood coated his tongue, and bolt out the door.

“Hmm,” Ging said, holding him in the waiting room by the collar as Kite hyperventilated and strained to get outside. The dentist, his face flushed and his hand cradled against his chest, scowled horribly at him. “I guess this was a bit too fast. But did you see any cavities, or…?”

Thirty minutes later the adrenaline high was all but gone and Kite, nauseous, stayed glued to Ging’s arm and tried to keep calm as another doctor shone lights in his eyes. It helped that Ging kept up a stream of chatter that Kite didn’t really follow very well. Something to do with sugarless diets and how they didn’t invite cavities anyway. The doctor’s eyes went back and forth between the two of them, but they didn’t comment.

The only two sticking points were the drawing of blood—during which Kite stared down the doctor as they went through the motions, tense enough to vibrate in his seat even with Ging muttering soothingly into his ear—and when at the beginning they had asked him to take off his clothes.

“It—it’s the best way to test reflexes, and to check for diseases of the skin,” they said warily, holding their clipboard in front of their chest. Kite couldn’t really listen to their explanations, since he was busy trying to stay perfectly, rigidly still rather than kick them in the face and make another run for it. Ging’s unshakeable hold on his arm helped in the sense that Kite knew he couldn’t escape if he tried and made things worse in the sense that he knew he couldn’t escape if he tried. He settled on keeping an iron grip on his clothes as Ging steadily dissuaded the doctor, promising that Kite could use the mirror to examine himself for anything and would report back anything strange, right, Kite…

“Right,” he agreed, sounding strangled even to himself.

Afterwards, Ging promised that he wouldn’t have to visit any doctors or dentists or anything anytime soon. “It’s probably close to miraculous to them, that you don’t have much in the way of diseases,” he said as they waited to pick up a lunch to take back to their rooms. Kite was still twitchy enough that eating in public was out of the question. “But _Nen_ users tend to be quite healthy. The aura acts as a sort of extra immune system, a primary defense. Not only for Enhancers, either, though Enhancers have the strongest bodies.

“Ah, right, I haven’t explained it all yet, have I?” Ging interrupted himself. “Once we get back I’ll fill you in on the different kinds of Nen users and what they can do. Probably basic techniques would be good, too, though from the look of things you’ve got some of them down already.”

The part of Kite that always had its back to the wall and its claws raised made it difficult to enjoy these small pieces of praise that Kite wasn’t sure Ging even intended to be praise. _What does he want?_ It hissed. _Why is he being so nice? No one is nice without a reason. No one is nice if they don’t want something, not to_ me. But at the same time to hear that he’d done something right made him so happy it hurt, and the two conflicting feelings made him feel mixed up enough that eventually he had to give up thinking about it altogether. Luckily Ging didn’t seem to expect Kite to contribute much to the conversation anyway, so his distraction was either unnoticed or unimportant.

 

 

 

Just under a day after Kite had discovered how nice it was to feel clean and to buy things, Ging sat him down at the desk of his hotel room and put an almost-full glass of water in front of him. It didn’t look like anything special at first glance and Kite wondered vaguely if he was supposed to drink it. The smell of the roasted beef and vegetables still sitting in their containers was making it so that he had to keep swallowing or risk drooling. Which wouldn’t be any kind of deal at all to dogs, let alone a big one, but it was something that he felt human people probably didn’t do.

“Master—”

“How many times do I have to—”

“ _Ging_ ,” Kite cut in. “Can I—Are we going to eat soon?”

“Just a second, I just need to check something.”

With a flourish, Ging put a small leaf on the surface of the water. It twirled slowly, doing nothing.

“… Now??”

“Not yet, I need you to pay attention first…”

Kite swallowed and gave the food one last longing glance before focusing on the glass.

“Right. Do you remember the water divination test I told you about? This is that, now, put your hands around the glass and use _Ren_ ; what you did when I was outside your house, draw out your aura—right, like that!”

Ging leaned over his shoulder and watched the glass with rapt attention. For a long second it just trembled slightly. Ging’s breath caught at the same moment that Kite noticed the water getting murkier; not by much, but as he let go of his _Ren_ uncertainly a fine layer of sediment sank to the bottom of the glass. Ging reached down to pick it up and swirled it around, his smile wide and satisfied.

“Conjurer,” he said.

He looked back down and caught one of Kite’s subtle shifts toward the boxes of food. “Okay, go ahead.”

The words had barely left his lips before Kite had ripped open the top container and was shoveling food into his mouth with his bare hands faster than he could taste it.

“Wow,” Ging commented, bemused, as Kite emptied the container in seconds. “Were you really that hungry? Maybe I should’ve woken you up in time for breakfast.”

Kite spared a second to look up at him blankly. Being hungry didn’t have anything to do with it. Or it did, but he’d been consistently hungry for so long that it was just his base state of being. Besides, who knew when the next meal would be?

He swallowed hard and looked back down as he remembered that it would be that evening.

“Sorry,” he muttered, but only slowed down enough to grab a fork.

“It’s fine,” Ging said blithely, picking up another container and a fork of his own. “Old habits are hard to break. And I don’t really care about table manners.”

 

 

 

Once all the containers were scraped clean Kite turned back to the glass and picked it up to eye the sediment at the bottom himself. It looked more like dust than anything.

“Pennugh fr yr foughtf” Ging said around his mouthful. At Kite’s look of mild alarm he quickly held up a finger, chewed, and tried again. “Penny for your thoughts.” This continued to produce no results and he waved his fork at the glass impatiently. “What are you thinking about??”

“I’m finally clean, but the first thing I do is make more dirt.”

Ging squinted at him. “Don’t get mopey. Besides, now we know you’re a Conjuror, so that’ll make things easier.”

“What does that mean?” Kite put the glass down and faced Ging, leaning forward curiously. “Being a ‘Conjuror’?”

Ging, sitting hunched over on the edge of the bed, chewed the bite of food he’d just put in his mouth with a look of mild exasperation. “It’s a kind of subset of _Nen_ ,” he said once he could. “There are six different categories of what you can do with _Nen_ , and Conjuring is one of them. The others are Enhancement, Emission…”

He went on to detail what each category was capable of. Kite listened, spellbound, and fixed every word into his memory. It was unexpectedly relieving to have words to describe what he already knew existed. It made the world easier to understand.

“So I made this appear in the water,” he said as Ging ended his impromptu lecture, pointing to the silt in the glass, “and that means I’m a Conjurer?”

“Yep,” Ging said succinctly.

“Can I Conjure something right now?”

“Maybe, but you shouldn’t.” Ging wiped his mouth off on the back of his hand, grimacing at the grease.

“Why?”

“Basically, once you can do a technique with _Nen_ , you’ll always be able to do that technique. You might get rusty but it’ll always be there, even if it’s completely useless. And there’s a limit on how many techniques you can learn with _Nen_ , so you don’t want to waste any on stuff you just do on a whim.”

He eyed Kite as Kite shifted back in his chair, crestfallen, and grinned. “But there’s other cool things you can learn before trying to Conjure anything. Okay, so concentrating your aura in one place is called _Gyo_ …”

The afternoon was spent attempting to follow Ging’s instructions as he described _Nen_ techniques unconnected to any particular category. _Zetsu_ and _Ren_ were already well under his belt, and _Gyo_ wasn’t far behind. He hadn’t used _Shu_ often, but it was doable.

 _Ko_ was where he hit his first wall.

“What do you mean, use _Zetsu_ everywhere but one place?” he asked, his brow furrowing. “That would be dangerous.”

“Sure, there’s a risk involved, but having that strength can make a decisive difference in a fight. You’ve used _Zetsu_ when people were after you before, right?”

“When I was hidden.” A shiver ran down Kite’s spine as he recalled tense moments spent crouched in shadow, ready to sprint at the slightest hint of danger. “I never used it with someone in front of me.”

“ _Zetsu_ ’s not something you’ll use often in an actual fight, but _Ko_ is sometimes the only way to break through someone’s guard. I’ll demonstrate it later, once we’re out of the city and can actually train.”

Kite worried his bottom lip uncertainly but didn’t argue. Just learning the technique didn’t mean he had to use it, and it couldn’t hurt to know. And Ging obviously knew what he was talking about—by the time he pronounced himself ready to go eat dinner Kite was nursing a headache from trying to absorb so much information all at once.

 

 

 

“And you, miss?” the server asked sweetly, smiling at Kite as he quadruple-checked his choice and carefully relayed his order. “Alright! I’ll bring your appetizers out in just a moment.”

As she walked away Ging raised an eyebrow at Kite, who was devouring his fifth piece of bread in two minutes. “You’re gonna get sick if you eat this much that fast.”

Kite snorted. “I’m not wasting food like that.”

Ging shrugged. “If you say so. I take it you don’t mind it when people refer to you as ‘miss’ or ‘she’?”

“… Not really,” Kite said, reaching for another slice of bread and actually adding butter to it this time. “It doesn’t feel any different from ‘he’, I guess. Either is fine.”

“What about ‘they’?”

Kite made a vague, uncertain gesture and Ging nodded. “Do you want me to stick with one over the other? You can use different ones on different days, if you like.”

“Ho’y ffif,” Kite said, staring wide-eyed at the buttered bread, and promptly shoved the rest of it into his mouth. “Thiff if fo ‘ood??”

After a second spent deciphering the muffled words Ging laughed. “Yeah, butter’s pretty nice.”

Kite coughed roughly trying to swallow it all and, having already drained his own glass of water, was handed Ging’s as well. “I don’t care,” he said bluntly upon clearing his throat and snatching up another piece of bread to butter.

“Fair enough,” Ging said. “I’ll stick with ‘he’, then, and you can tell me if you prefer something else.”

 

\--

 

“I’m going to have you take the Hunter Exam,” Ging declared not two hours later.

“The what?”

Ging grinned at him from where he sat cross-legged a few feet away. They were both perched on Ging’s bed, the setting sun’s softened light illuminating the room. “The Hunter Exam. Then you’ll be a licensed Hunter.”

“… But,” Kite said slowly, “I haven’t… even trained yet…? Isn’t this kind of fast, master?”

“A, don’t call me that,” Ging said, holding up his fingers as he listed. “B, yes. C, it doesn’t really matter because most people who take the Exam don’t even know _Nen_ exists. You’re more than qualified already, and having the license will prevent any arguments about me being unprofessional or irresponsible or whatever. It’s also easier logistically to make arrangements for two Hunters than for one Hunter and his student.” (A pleased thrill ran through Kite’s stomach at the words.) “The Exam’s in a few weeks, so good job on meeting me at a super convenient time.” (Another, slightly confused thrill, since he didn’t actually have any control over that.)

“There’s enough time for me to get you there a few days early and finish up the job I’m scheduled for,” Ging went on. “It’ll be fast, but you’ll be on your own for a bit.”

Kite stiffened, the small, warm glow he’d been enjoying guttering out. “Is that necessary? I won’t slow you down, and I’d…” he trailed off, picking up again in a low mutter when Ging raised an eyebrow. “I would prefer a different plan.”

“I looked into it a bit. The city the Exam’s in is too far away from the city my job is for us to be able to get there in time if we wait until the job’s over first. But right now there’s enough time to get you there and make a round trip to the job before the Exam’s done for more than a day or two.”

“There’s no alternative?” Kite asked one more time, in the vague, silly hope that he’d get a different answer.

“Nope,” Ging said flatly. “But hey, it’s only going to be, like, a week. It’ll be fine.”

 

\--

 

Ging hefted a hardbound book at him that Kite caught and turned around in his hands. _World History: Interaction and Change_ was emblazoned on the front cover in large white text over a photo of some triangle-shaped structures.

“That’s for you,” Ging told him, smiling as Kite flushed and held the book closer to his chest. “This train ride will take a while, so I figure it’s as good a time as any to get started.”

“On what?” Kite asked, absentmindedly flipping to random pages. The majority of the pages were covered in fine blocks of text, pictures occasionally intruding with even finer captions. In the back there were colorful maps that spanned two pages and laid out the world so that it fit in his hands.

“On education. I’m… pretty sure nobody was teaching you algebra, so along with _Nen_ training I’ll have to get you up to speed on all that, as well. Work your way through this textbook while you’re waiting for the Exam day. I’ll be back after you have a license to show off to test you on it, so no slacking. Also, there’s a bunch of stuff the people who write these get totally wrong, so I’ll make sure to set the record straight on those.”

“Which parts are wrong?” Kite opened to a random page curiously. The neat black boxes of text looked too official to be untrue, but if Ging said it was then he was prepared to believe it.

“Eh, we’ll get to that. Just read this one for now and I’ll get some on different subjects later. So many of these publishers don’t even bother to do fact-checking, honestly, any historian would recognize it at a glance. I can’t believe these people actually graduated from college, what were they even doing with their time…”

Ging rambled on in a grumble as the train rolled past wide lakes bordered by lush forests, the scenery passing by too fast for Kite to fully appreciate it for more than a few seconds. It seemed that as soon as he’d seen another expanse of water it was already receding into the distance so that he had to press his cheek to the glass window and crane his neck to see it at all. The faraway outline of tall, blocky buildings gradually grew as they approached the water-bound city the Exam would be held in, Isla del RÍos, and he gradually sank further and further down into his seat.

“… and it’s obvious to anyone who’s looked at the actual documents that the primary leader among Las Comandantes Milagrosas was LucÍa Borges, not Rafael de Troyes, so—uh, what are you doing?”

“Nothing,” Kite mumbled past the hat pulled halfway down his face and the coat collar that was bunching up around his ears as he slumped.

“You’re going to end up with back problems if you keep doing stuff like this,” Ging said, more of an amused observation than a warning. “You’re supposed to sit in the seat and sleep in the bed, you know.”

Kite made a face but sat up straight again. Fluffy, cushy chairs were easier than beds, at least. He’d ended up stripping off the numerous sheets from the bed and curling up on the floor the past few nights, nested in actual pillows. The mattress was too soft, and he could sleep more lightly on a hard surface. He had to be sure to be awake and ready at the same time as Ging, no matter how tempting it was to stay in the warmth; he had to keep up.

“How long is it until the Exam?”

“Six days,” Ging said for the seventh time. “I’ll point you toward where to go. It won’t be all that hard, since you’re used to finding secret passages, eh?”

“Right,” Kite agreed uncertainly. “And you’ll be back after then?”

“I’ll come back to a newly appointed pro Hunter.”

“… Okay.”

 

 

 

“Go on,” Ging said under his breath, pressing a hand to Kite’s back and pushing him forward slightly. “Just say what I told you and you’ll be fine.”

Kite bit his lip and hesitated a moment longer, eyeing the reception desk’s shiny counter and the flow of people passing in front of it. They didn’t even spare a glance in his and Ging’s direction as the two of them hovered by a cabinet.

“I don’t know what to do after that, though,” Kite protested. “Master, I don’t even know this language, I don’t think—”

“You’ll pick it up one way or another,” Ging cut in blithely. “And most people here are at least bilingual, so that’ll help. Anyway, just go. Get it over with.”

Kite took a deep breath and let it out slowly, checking his distance from the doors one last time. Then he steeled himself, straightened his back, and marched over to the desk.

“Perdón,” he said. The receptionist looked up from his computer, then looked down a few feet to where Kite’s face was.

“¿Sí señor?”

Being addressed directly was even more nerve-wracking than he’d anticipated and Kite’s tongue tripped over the phrases he’d been repeating in his head for an hour. “Qu-quisera—no, quisiera—reservar una… una habitación.”

The man’s gaze flickered toward where Ging was standing across the room, his eyebrows drawing down slightly in confusion. “¿Usted quiere hacer la reservación? ¿Qué pasa con su padre?”

“… Um.” Kite dug his fingernails into his palms and forced himself to think clearly despite the hair on the back of his neck standing up with the force of the judgmental glares that were surely being leveled in his direction. He just needed to do what Ging had said, then he could get away. “Está una reservación para Ging Freecss. Pero, uh, no hablo esta lengua.”

The man gave a small “ah” and nodded. “No problemo. I will check and see about your reservation.”

“Oh. Thank you,” Kite said with no small relief. When he glanced back to Ging he was met with a thumbs-up and a small smile, which made it easier to relax just a little bit. Even if he accidentally said something horrible, which there was a smaller chance of now that they were using a language he actually knew, Ging could keep the peace. Not for the first time, he reflected upon how nice it was to be protected.

“Okay,” the receptionist said cheerfully, drawing his attention. “There’s a room booked for Ging Freecss for the next eight days. Can I see your ID, please?”

“My what?”

“I’ll take it from here,” Ging’s voice suddenly muttered into his ear, making him jump and stumble sideways. Ging put a steadying hand on his shoulder, a move that backfired partially since Kite just flinched sideways again and hit his arm on the counter. He did manage to get his balance back, though. The receptionist looked concerned.

“¿Está bien?”

“Bien,” Ging answered for him. “Soy Ging Freecss, aquí está mi ID. Quiero pagar por la habitación de antemano. Es posible, ¿sí?”

“Ah, sí sí sí” the receptionist said, hurriedly looking at his computer. “Uno momento…”

Kite watched the conversation go by, mystified. As the receptionist fiddled with Ging’s card Ging turned to look at him and Kite stiffened.

‘Good job,’ Ging mouthed.

Kite’s shoulders dropped as the tension drained out of them and he smiled tentatively back.

The next day, he was alone again.

 

 

 

Ging departed from the same train station they’d arrived at with a wave and a call of “Don’t forget about that book!” Kite was left on the platform, waving mechanically until the train was out of sight. Ging had left a generous sum of money for him to get by on, a guarantee of safety that Kite hoarded jealously every time he set foot outside of his hotel room. Which, granted, was not often. On the first day he risked going out to a grocery store and stocking up on all the canned food and dried meat he could carry, accumulating a supply that he rationed out carefully over the next three days. As his supplies dwindled he argued with himself over what to do next—it would be easiest to go out and restock, but even the extraordinary novelty of having a room was wearing off the longer he stayed in the hotel and pored over the textbook. And he had to start acting like a normal human person, which meant either cooking for himself or…

The skirt, which had been getting a lot of use, was a comforting reminder of his new status as he went to a restaurant on his own for the first time.

The hotel was close to where Ging had indicated the Exam entrance would be, but he hadn’t said exactly which building it was. Just that once he got there, Kite should ask for a ‘plato de mistake queobre lososos a la ooze’. He’d repeated the phrase so many times in his head that he was almost certain he’d gotten mixed up somewhere, which was more than a little worrying. But worrying about it only made him less and less certain, so he fixed the words he thought were right into his memory and tried not to think about it. In general, he managed to get by on little more than “Sí” and “Grácias”, just pointing to a random item on the menu when he got to a small, calm restaurant rather than attempting to decipher the text. Whatever it was, it came out hissing and steaming.

“Ten cuidado, por favor,” the server said as she placed it in front of him. Her nametag read ‘Eulalia’. “Está muy, muy caliente. ¿Comprede?”

“… ¿Sí?”

Eulalia didn’t look convinced and mimed touching the plate, then drawing back and hissing with pain. “Está caliente.”

“Oh!” Kite said as the connection clicked in his mind. “Caliente. It’s hot.”

That had been sort of obvious but she smiled and nodded all the same, so he got a now-familiar but still exceptionally nice flash of pride. “Grácias.”

“De nada. Está… you are alone?”

Again, Kite hesitated and told a technical truth. “I’m here for the Hunter Exam.”

“So many are,” she said, glancing around the room. He followed her gaze to a few burly men with visible, oversized weaponry. They glared at anyone who so much as passed by their table, posturing by flexing their biceps and chugging their drinks. The type of person who got thrown out of bars in the middle of the night for being too rowdy and didn’t react well to being approached.

Recalling what Ging had explained, Kite carefully focused and drew his aura up to his eyes. All across the room people’s shapes went slightly blurry as their own _Nen_ became visible, just thin cloaks of what looked like steam—none of them had conscious control over it, or if they did they were hiding it well. He glanced around curiously, expecting at least one of the other prospective Hunters to be a _Nen_ user, but the only person whose aura was strong enough was standing by his side, raising her eyebrows.

“Looking for something?” Eulalia asked with a light note of teasing.

Kite’s mouth twitched up into a smile. “Not anymore. Um—por favor, quisiera…” She waited with a patient smile as he ran his tongue over his teeth nervously, finally blurting out “Plado de mistake queobre lasojos ala ooze.”

Her expression shifted to mild disbelief and he felt his face go red. A sudden urge to grab the plate of food and bolt for the door seized him which was only held at bay by the fear of never finding the Exam and the fact that the plate was still spitting with heat.

“Un plato,” Eulalia said, waiting again until he realized he was supposed to say it back to her.

“Un plato…”

“Un plato de bistec.”

Oh. That was probably the first place he’d gone wrong. “Un plato de bistec.”

“Que abre los ojos…”

“Un plato de… de bistec que obre— _abre_ los ojos…”

She smiled earnestly. “A la luz.”

“Los ojos a la luz,” Kite said with relief. “Grácias. Un plato de bistec que abre los ojos a la luz.”

“Good!” Eulalia cheered, clapping her hands together lightly. “That is our special in two more days. Come back then and I will serve it myself!”

Kite leaned back in his seat, feeling rather like his bones were turning to jelly. “Grácias. Grácias.”

 

 

 

In two days’ time he had restocked and fit as many supplies as he could into his travel bag. A change of clothes (including the skirt that he’d decided against wearing to the Exam, since pants were easier to move around in); his toothbrush (which wasn’t a necessity but that he enjoyed having); what remained of Ging’s money (that is, most of it); and enough canned food and packs of dried meat to make the catch holding the bag closed strain. He knew that leaving some of it in the hotel room would make things easier for him, but the moment anything was out of his sight he was hounded by the thought of coming back to find what little he had gone.

Eulalia led him to the back room of the restaurant and flipped a panel on the wall up, revealing a button. “This goes to a tram,” she said, indicating the small space. “Which goes to the Exam. You’re one of the first to arrive, congratulations.”

“Thanks,” Kite said absentmindedly, reaching up to readjust his hat for the thousandth time that day.

Just as she was moving to close the door she paused and looked at him with an expression he was surprised to recognize as concern.

“It’s a dangerous event,” Eulalia told him, tapping her fingers on the sill. “Please, muchacho. Ten cuidado. Be careful. I will wait to see you after it is over.”

Kite paused and processed what she was saying for a few seconds. Her visible uncertainty made it clear that this wasn’t something she said to every contestant, but he couldn’t fathom what made him different. All the same, he smiled and nodded. “Grácias, Eulalia. I’ll come and show you my license.”

She gave him a small smile and nodded. The door shut with a click and Kite grabbed the nearest wall as the room began to move. He was pretty sure he’d never get used to standing inside of things that weren’t rooted to the ground, especially since they all made worrying whirring noises.

 

\--

 

The Exam itself, as Ging had predicted, was nothing noteworthy.

There were some highlights, of course. Most of the prospective Hunters were older than he was by a wide margin and he drew a couple sidelong glances. Nothing he wasn’t used to, though as each person entered he kept a careful eye on them with _Gyo_. Only two other people were visibly in control of their aura, and they both looked exceptionally bored. One stayed on her phone practically the entire time and didn’t look anyone in the eye; the other gave him a once-over, but didn’t make any moves.

Kite had been one of the first arrivals, so he had a good vantage point from which to assess the competition. He’d bet that all of them had him beat in terms of physical strength, though he was no pushover himself, so it would be best to keep his head down. Only one person made a special effort to single him out.

He approached Kite just as he was pacing along the edge of the crowd, searching out an emptier place to wait until the Exam officially began. “Hey, this is your first time taking the Exam, right?” he asked cheerfully. His distinctively square nose wrinkled as he smiled and held up a can. A quick glance confirmed that it seemed to still be sealed, but there was an eagerness to the offer that set Kite on edge. “Want to sit a while and talk? I’ve taken it loads of times, so I have a lot of exper—”

“No,” Kite said, and walked away.

The man, a ‘rookie crusher’ Kite gathered from what he could overhear, was eliminated in the second stage anyway, so his experience couldn’t have been all that valuable.

Another competitor had a dog with him that snuffled happily at everything it could. During the third stage, an intricate obstacle course that Kite weaved his way through with far more ease than anyone with a decent amount of musculature, it kept up with him enough that he could duck out of sight of its owner and pet its cute head. It licked his hand and wagged its tail so hard its butt wiggled. Eventually they had to part ways again and Kite felt a curious ache in his chest. He would have called it homesickness if he had actually ever had a home.

The only time he felt worried was at the end of the obstacle course when his foot slipped on a smooth rock face while crossing river rapids and the catch came undone on his bag. He stayed on his feet and kept his hat on his head, but the dried meat and canned fruit spilled out into the water and vanished beneath the surface. Kite very nearly dove in after them in a burst of wild panic before he caught himself. It grated at his nerves to let all that food go to waste, but for the thousandth time he reminded himself that Ging had agreed not to let him starve. So long as he was with Ging, he didn’t have to worry about storing food for later.

That didn’t stop him from worrying, of course, but it helped him direct his nervous energy toward finishing the Exam.

 

 

 

Once it was all over and done, each of them who had passed was called in to the examiner’s office to receive their licenses. It was a far smaller collection of people than had shown up to make the attempt, and grew smaller as the newly official Hunters were awarded their prize. Kite’s trepidation mounted as one by one the others left him still waiting; he was the last to be called. He clutched the strap of his bag to still his shaking hands, irrationally certain that they would tell him they’d made a mistake and this wasn’t, actually, a place for him, so he would need to leave or be kicked out, and even though he’d done what they said it wouldn’t matter if they decided not to acknowledge that and without a license he couldn’t travel and it had been stupid of him to think he could pull off something like this at all—

“There you go,” the examiner said mildly, handing him a small folder.

Kite turned in over in his hands in disbelief. Inside the folder, just as promised, sat a glossy card with two X’s emblazoned at the top.

“This is mine?” he asked.

The examiner blinked. “Yes, of course. You passed, after all.”

Having had very little interaction with human people, Kite wasn’t sure of how good his poker face was. All the same, he did his best not to let on that he felt like crying with relief. “Thank you. I’ll just—go, then.”

“Ah, hang on,” they said, waving their hand as he half-stood from the chair. “There’s just a spiel I have to give you about it.”

“… A spiel?” He sat back down heavily.

“Right. So now that you’re a Hunter, you’ll never not be a Hunter. That’s one of the Association commandments. Anyone who’s passed the Exam can’t have their Hunter status revoked. At the same time, though, you can’t take the Exam again and if you lose that license you’re not getting another one. Make sense?”

Kite nodded and they ruffled through the papers on their desk. “Great. There’s a room down the hallway where someone will take your picture and thumbprint, to prevent any identity fraud. Hunter licenses are pretty sought-after, so be sure to look after yours. That’s about it, so congratulations and good luck.”

“Thank you,” Kite said awkwardly, rising from the chair again with some hesitation. The examiner waved goodbye to him without looking up from their papers.

“By the way, somebody’s waiting for you outside.”

 

 

 

“… You came back.”

Ging cocked his head and grinned. “Of course. I finished up a bit early and heard you passed. Had to hotfoot it here, but I take it you have something to show off that’ll make the effort worth it?”

“Oh, um—” Kite fumbled to open the folder and hold up the license. The ache of fatigue had been weighing him down, but as Ging’s smile grew all of Kite’s discomfort vanished in a sunburst wash of pride.

“Knew you could do it,” Ging said casually, and Kite had to pull the brim of his hat down over his eyes for a second as he blinked rapidly. “Ah, c’mon, none of that…”

“There’s a picture I have to take,” Kite said once he was sure his voice would be steady again. Ging snorted.

“What, the identity thing? That’s just for show. You don’t actually have to do it, or the thumbprint.”

Kite frowned and furrowed his brow, tilting his head to the side. “Then why do it at all? The examiner made it sound really important.” Ging crossed his arms and sighed through his nose. “I mean—if you say it’s not, I won’t do it, but…”

“I don’t care one way or the other,” Ging said bluntly. “But not everybody who passes the Exam, or takes the Exam for that matter, is a good person. A lot of criminals use their licenses to get classified information or to get off murder charges. Hunters have a lot of power that a lot of people abuse. The fingerprint thing is just so the Association can say they’ve checked the criminal databases against ours and there aren’t any matches. That way governments won’t start yapping about shutting the Association down.”

The information settled slowly in Kite’s mind as he thought it over from every angle, turning it on its head and back, and always came to the same conclusion. He bit his lip and tentatively asked “Isn’t that _terrible?_ ”

Ging blinked, visibly taken aback. “Well, sure. But it’s a hellish bureaucracy, so changing it would take years. Some people are working on that, but I’m not getting involved. I’ve got better things to do.” With a bored face, he cleaned out his ear with a pinky finger. “Besides, there are other people who pass the Exam like you and me who just want to travel around without having to slog through all sorts of boring procedures. And one of the Hunter Commandments is that Hunters who commit crimes can be hunted down, so it’s not a complete failure.”

‘Not a complete failure’ was, apparently, good enough for Ging. Kite looked down at his license with a new sense of disconcertion, more than a little troubled at the thought of what was giving him a new chance to build a life also giving people the chance to destroy the lives of others without consequence.

“Anyway,” Ging interrupted his train of thought. “Are you gonna do the picture or what?”

Kite hesitated a second before admitting “I don’t want to break the rules.”

The corner of Ging’s mouth curled up in a lopsided smile. “Go ahead, then. I’ll be here. Don’t take too long.”

Kite nodded and looked down the hallway; there were only two places to go apart from the door out of the examiner’s office he’d come from. One clearly led to the courtyard, so the other must be where the photo was taken. Sure enough, when he knocked and poked his head in there was a big camera stationed in front of a grey background.

“Come to do the picture?” the camerawoman asked dully, not even looking away from her computer screen.

“Yes,” Kite confirmed, wandering toward the stool across from the camera. “Should I just… sit here…?”

“Sit there, keep your eyes open, don’t show teeth,” she said. He sat, following her instructions, and hoped it wouldn’t been an issue that he flinched involuntarily at the sudden flash of light. “Great. Bye.”

She turned back to her computer and propped her chin up in one hand, ignoring his tiny hand gestures attempting to reclaim her attention.

“There’s a thumbprint too, isn’t there?” Kite asked helplessly. She looked at him sideways from half-lidded eyes.

“Paper’s there. Inkpad’s next to it. Get your thumb wet, put it on the paper.”

“Thank you,” he muttered, resolving to finish what he’d come to do quickly and get away from the woman’s bad attitude. The thumbprint was easy, and he was able to find the damp towel to wipe ink off his fingers without asking her. “I’ll be going, then.”

“You should put in your birthday, too,” a gravelly voice said right next to his ear.

Kite ducked sideways reflexively, spinning on his heel to face the threat and bringing his hands up defensively. Behind him, the woman’s breath caught and he could hear her chair dragging across the floor as she stood. The door to the courtyard was closest, but Ging was down the hallway so that was probably his best bet—

The old man who’d appeared out of nowhere chuckled and stroked his hooked beard with one hand, the other hidden in his oversized sleeve. “Ho ho ho, calm down, now. I’m just here to say hello. No use running.”

His heart pounding, Kite knew that he was right. There’d been no hint of his presence before he was already less than a yard away. There was no chance Kite could outrun him.

“I’ve been sizing up this year’s winners,” the man went on, looking Kite up and down. It was different from how anyone else had, except Ging. Less than his appearance was being judged and more that… Kite couldn’t quite put his finger on it. That they were seeing more than other people could. “The examiners say you passed with flying colors. Good work.”

“… Thank you,” Kite said warily, still half-crouched though his breathing was slowing down again.

“Mm-hmm.”

A small silence settled. Behind Kite, the woman had settled back into her chair and was, presumably, attempting to look as busy as possible. The old man kept squinting at him and Kite couldn’t help but glance toward the doorway and wonder how the man had gotten in without Ging seeming to notice. “Um, who are you?”

“Ah, I forgot to introduce myself!” The man chuckled again and leaned down into Kite’s face. Kite stiffened and leaned back. “I am Isaac Netero, Chairman of the Hunter Association.”

He stopped and stared into Kite’s face. Kite tried to look sufficiently impressed.

“And you are?”

“Kite.”

“Kite,” Netero repeated. His gaze sharpened. “Why are you here, Kite?”

Kite had only just opened his mouth to answer when, from the hall, Ging drawled “Chairman, stop harassing my student.”

Netero straightened up, to Kite’s relief, and looked over his own shoulder to where Ging was leaning on the doorsill. “Your student, Ging? I hadn’t thought you the type. What are you going to do with a student?”

Ging made a face at him and strolled over to Kite’s side. “Wow, thanks. I’m doing pretty well so far, he’s already a pro Hunter.”

“And that was _your_ doing,” Netero said with heavy skepticism.

“What’s that supposed to mean??” Ging grumbled, scowling. Kite watched him with mixed confusion and wonder. Ging acted wildly different among other Hunters than he did with normal people. He must have been more relaxed, and apparently while relaxed Ging was quite grumpy.

“I didn’t come here so you could badger my student and insult me to my face, you know, Chairman.”

“No, I suppose you wouldn’t have.” Netero smirked.

Ging huffed angrily and looked at Kite. “You’re done, right? Let’s go.”

“Ah, wait a moment!” Netero cut in. “I was just saying that he should put his birthday in with the photo and print.”

“What? No,” Ging snapped at him, his patience visibly running thin. “There’s no point.”

Netero chuckled, impervious to the daggers Ging was glaring at him. “No point! And after I went through so much trouble to set up a birthday present system for you all. You can’t tell me you don’t enjoy getting a gift on your birthday, Ging.”

“I don’t enjoy getting what _you_ think of as a gift,” Ging said flatly. “Not since you buried me in paperwork five years ago.”

A happy sigh escaped Netero as he closed his eyes and smiled, nodding. “Ah, yes, that was quite the sight. It’s not my fault you never fill out the official forms for the jobs you take, you know. Your gifts would be much more enjoyable if you did.”

“No one fills out the forms! You just like tormenting me. The whole gift system is only there to make things harder for everyone because you think it’s funny.”

“Not untrue,” Netero conceded. Ging scoffed loudly and stepped around Netero, making for the door. “But it’s up to Kite whether he wants to put in a birthday.”

Kite stiffened and looked nervously between them. “I—I don’t want to slow us down.”

“But do you want to specify a birthday?”

“I don’t even really have one, and since there isn’t really a need, not that your system is bad, Chairman, but if it’s just something for a joke then I don’t need to—”

“That’s not what I asked,” Netero said unshakably, leaning down to look him directly in the eye. Kite leaned back again, caught between wanting to respect Netero’s authority and not wanting to test Ging’s patience. Netero’s eyes twinkled, dark and unreadable. “Do _you want_ to choose a birthday?”

Kite stumbled over his words for a second longer before one of Netero’s eyebrows raised quizzically and he subsided into a small admission of “Yes.”

Ging sighed heavily and Kite immediately rushed to correct himself. “But it’s not really important, so there’s no reason to stay, so we can just leave—”

“Whatever,” Ging said, slumping over on the doorsill. “If you don’t pick one this geezer’ll never let me hear the end of it, so just do it.”

Netero laughed and didn’t try to refute him. Kite hesitated, then nodded and looked around the room for some kind of inspiration. “What day is it today?” he asked.

“January fifth. Why?”

“Then… that would make it…” Kite mumbled to himself, counting with his fingers. “December twentieth…”

Ging blinked for a second, then stiffened. “Oh! Hmm.” He crossed his arms and furrowed his brow, hardening his expression even as his face turned dark red.

“If that’s okay?” Kite asked tentatively.

“Whatever,” Ging said with a short shrug, looking away. He was shifting his weight from foot to foot and kept readjusting his arms. A smile spread across Kite’s face as he realized that Ging was embarrassed. Netero looked absolutely gleeful.

“Okay,” Kite said, feeling a deep ache of happiness in his chest as he mentally marked down the day he’d met Ging as his birthday. “December twentieth.”

“A good choice,” Netero said in a sagely satisfied way, stroking his beard. “What year?”

“That’s not necessary,” Ging grumbled under his breath, then raised his voice to override the conversation. “Eighteen years ago. There, we’re done.”

Kite blinked and looked at him with surprise. “Eighteen? I’m… not really that old, though…?”

“No way in hell,” Ging said blithely, his relaxed demeanor returning. “I’d peg you more as fifteen. _Maybe_ sixteen. But most countries have their age of majority law at eighteen. Your license basically overrides any attempt to paint you as a child legally, but it’s best to be sure.”

“Also a good choice, considering how well you’ve dealt with children in the past,” Netero commented quietly.

The atmosphere in the room shifted before the sentence was even complete. It wasn’t obvious, but if Kite had any one skill it was picking up on signs of danger. Ging had looked annoyed before, but for one reason or another the jab had tipped the scale closer to actual anger. Not full-fledged anger, but Kite made another mental note not to push the subject when it was clearly thin ice. Netero was far more unbothered than he was and only stroked his beard, meeting Ging’s gaze levelly.

“I’m satisfied,” he declared, stepping out from between Kite and the door. “By all means, don’t let me detain you.”

Ging huffed and turned to face Kite, ignoring Netero’s presence. Kite straightened his back and did his best to look like a dutiful student, stepping forward to him. “Anyway, Kite, I now that that’s over and done with we can actually get going and do something worthwhile.” He flicked up the brim of Kite’s hat so that it slid backwards off of his head; Kite caught it behind his back and Ging face shifted into a grin. “Congratulations. You’ve got a license _and_ a birthday now. You exist.”

“Yes,” Netero mused, stroking his beard as he watched Ging pet the top of Kite’s head and Kite look up at him with nothing less than adoration. “Congratulations.”

 

 

 

 


	3. A Bird in the Hand

 

 

  

“Fifteen,” Ging announced. Kite immediately let go of his _Ren_ and collapsed backwards, gasping for breath. They’d begun the day’s training hours before the sun rose and it was only just setting, the sky painted in pink. Ging leaned over him and smirked. “What, is that—”

“—all I can do,” Kite finished tiredly, glaring at him with an annoyed squint. The effect was rather lost by how he couldn’t move much more than his fingers. All his bones had turned to jelly. “Yes, Ging, shockingly enough I’m only capable of doing _Ren_ for fifteen hours. You must be _so_ disappointed.”

Ging’s smirk turned to a shit-eating grin and he nudged Kite’s side with his foot. “I sure am. What would you do if something attacked you right now? You’d have to—”

Kite rolled out of the way as the ground where his head had been shattered, grunting as he pulled a muscle in his neck flicking his hair out of the way of Ging’s fist.

“—manage somehow,” Ging finished, extracting his hand from the small hole the blow had created. “Not bad, not bad. But could’ve been better. Enemies won’t care how much _Nen_ you’ve been using. Attacking you while you’re low on energy would be their best bet, actually. So…?”

“No excuses,” Kite sighed, pushing himself up onto his knees. At least Ging had given him something of a warning this time. The phrase ‘What would you do’ made him tense instinctively at this point. “I know.”

He just barely got his arm up to guard in time to block Ging’s foot as it whirled toward his head. The impact jarred his arm and he winced, knowing that he’d added another bruise to the collection that had been going on for two years now. In his more poetic moments he considered his body a canvas that had only been painted with black and blue. Or more accurately, red, purple, blue, edges rimmed in green, and yellow as they faded. It was a rare sparring session that he didn’t walk out of with at least five new works of art.

The force of the kick sent him sideways and he rolled again, coming up onto his feet to dodge the next blow toward his ribs. His _Nen_ was already drained almost to nothing, so he resolved to use it as sparingly as possible before Ging stepped into place in front of him and Kite couldn’t afford to think of anything but avoiding as much pain as possible.

As he’d once thought would be the case, he didn’t excel in the realm of physical strength. There were likely to be Hunters who far outstripped him in that category. He’d gotten stronger, of course, exponentially so—it would have been impossible not to, given the grueling exercise necessary just to cling to Ging’s coattails. But using _Nen_ to make up for what he lacked in brawn came more easily to him than striving to put on muscle. It just never happened, regardless of what he ate or what conditioning he did. It all seemed to go toward making him taller, a growth spurt that left him nearly a foot above where he’d been when he’d met Ging and which showed no signs of stopping. It was nice in one sense, that every so often Ging would look at him and sulk at how obvious it was that Kite was going to end up being taller than him, and aggravating in another, that it meant his center of balance was constantly changing and throwing him off.

Having to compensate for his physical strength mostly meant that his training had thus far largely comprised of doing _Ren_ for tedious hours on end and of being constantly ready to dodge one of Ging’s spontaneous sparring sessions which, apparently, were supposed to ensure his reflexes were up to par. They were certainly effective in the sense that Kite was now prepared to field an attack at literally any point in the day, including the few hours during which he was asleep. He’d never been a heavy sleeper, but it was something else entirely to be able to go directly from dozing into being prepared to fight. Every time he had to wonder bewilderedly when _Ging_ got any sleep. The man didn’t seem to need the things other humans did.

A blow caught his shoulder, but the familiar pain didn’t even faze him. Rather than holding his ground he used the significant momentum to augment a hasty retreat; in other words, he was thrown backwards several yards and managed to twist himself around in midair to land on his feet. Ging didn’t close the distance immediately and Kite took the opportunity to breath out slowly, concentrating on drawing out the exact amount of _Nen_ needed to coalesce into—

“Getting your ass kicked, I see!” Crazy Slots snickered as it appeared above his palm in a whirl of smoke. “Say ‘please’ and maybe I’ll help out.”

 

 

 

It had taken until one year after he passed the Hunter Exam for Kite to ask about _Hatsu_.

“Most people don’t think about that until a few years into their training,” Ging mumbled evasively, pretending to concentrate on shaping his _Nen_ into silly little shapes that danced around his fingers.

“Most people can’t do _Ren_ for seven hours,” Kite countered. “Or use _En_ at ten meters.” He had to actually concentrate on getting his Nen to form any shape at all, let alone the variety of warts Ging produced with such ease. At the moment he’d managed to get one to travel slowly around the curve of each of his fingers and was struggling to form a second.

“… True,” Ging admitted, letting his Nen sink back to the level of his skin. “Uhp—nope, you keep going with that.”

Kite groaned under his breath but complied, painstakingly reforming the lump that had half-disappeared when his focus lapsed. “What is this even going to _do_ , master?”

“Don’t call me that,” Ging said absentmindedly, waving away the question with a languid hand. “Precision of Nen control, practice getting it to conform to your intention, good as a party trick…”

“So nothing,” Kite said under his breath. Ging glanced at him sidelong and the ghost of a smirk passed over his face before he yawned and it vanished.

“Manipulating your _Nen_ at this level is good practice for when you want to develop a Transmutation skill for something. Besides, making shapes out of _Nen_ is exactly what Conjurers do with their _Hatsu_ , so I don’t know what you’re complaining about.”

Kite opened his mouth, then closed it again with a frown as he looked at the little bump of _Nen_ at the tip of his finger. “I… I guess that’s true. So this is already training for using a _Hatsu_?”

Ging shrugged in a way that more or less conveyed ‘Sure, why not’.

“Why didn’t you just say so?”

“ _Hatsu_ training’s pretty specific, since you have to know exactly what you’re aiming for before you even start. This’ll help speed things up, probably, but it’s not going to be directly useful in a fight.”

He briefly checked the time on his phone as Kite divided his attention between maintaining the exercise, with greater fervor now that he knew there was a point, and thinking hard. “What if my _Hatsu_ isn’t useful for fighting anyway?”

For the first time he saw what incredulity looked like on Ging’s face. “What? Don’t be ridiculous. Why wouldn’t you develop a _Hatsu_ you can defend yourself with?”

“Well—” Kite stuttered, “Why _would_ I develop a _Hatsu_ for fighting? I don’t want to fight if I don’t have to, so a _Hatsu_ that does something else would be more useful…”

He trailed off as Ging shook his head. His little Nen wart collapsed in on itself as he lost concentration worrying what he’d said wrong.

“Hunters can’t afford to have a _Hatsu_ that’s not useful in a fight unless they’re so proficient at using techniques like _Ken_ and _Ryu_ that they can make up for it.”

“I could just practice using those until I can do that, then.”

“That would take decades. Frankly, I’m not willing to play teacher for that long.”

“Then once you run out of patience I’ll just find someone else.” Ging’s brow furrowed slightly and a pang of guilt spurred Kite to continue, “Not that I don’t want to learn from you, but once you decide you don’t want to put up with teaching anymore…”

Ging looked slightly mollified, but it didn’t soften his countenance much. “There aren’t a lot of people in the world who have mastered _Nen_ to the extent that would be necessary to teach what you’re talking about, and none of them are the type to waste time teaching. I can guarantee that. It’d be possible to get stronger on your own, definitely, but it’s just the better option to develop a _Hatsu_ and spend your time refining that. Also, don’t think I haven’t noticed you gave up on the exercise.”

Kite stiffened and looked at his hand, which certainly didn’t have any _Nen_ warts crawling around on it. The conversation had completely driven it out of his mind. “Sorry,” he muttered, refocusing and reforming the little bump. It was more difficult than it had been the first time because he couldn’t help but uneasily return to the question of a _Hatsu_ again and again, which kept making his progress backslide.

Once he’d shaped it and sent it moving around his finger, an effort that left his hands shaking, he looked up from under the brim of his hat. “Still, I could just avoid getting into fights altogether. I’m good at that. I’ve been doing it since I was five. Approximately.”

It didn’t help his uneasiness that the reply to this suggestion was a long-suffering sigh.

“Like I said, Hunters can’t _afford_ to have a _Hatsu_ that won’t help in a fight.” Ging said with a distinct tone of grumpiness.

“… Right,” Kite muttered, looking down at his hand. Ging hated repeating himself. Despite the urge to shut up and make himself as invisible as possible, he tentatively pressed on. “But I’ve been able to handle everything so far, so…”

“I’ve been taking easy jobs,” Ging shot him down flatly. “For your sake.”

“Oh.”

Silence settled over them. Recalling the kinds of places Ging had been taking him, Kite felt an anticipatory thrill. They had all required strenuous traveling; clambering across rocky cliffs to reach an ancient outpost, fording a wide river densely populated by predators in search of sunken trade ships, curling up in a cave as outside a blizzard roared and threatened the lives of another expedition. If those were the easy jobs, what would a difficult one look like? A _normal_ one, even?

Sweat dripped down his face as he managed to form two warts and move them around in unison. Maybe it was best to take Ging’s advice, since he knew what he was talking about.

“What kind of _Hatsu_ should I have, then?” he asked.

Ging, who had slumped back on a tree with crossed arms, presumably to nap, raised an eyebrow without opening his closed eyes. “What do you _want_ to have?”

Kite hummed under his breath, trying to come up with a weapon that would suit him. A part of him wanted to say again that he wanted something that would just be useful in everyday life, something he could use that didn’t necessarily hurt anyone. But it was useless to try and convince Ging of anything once his mind was made up. “I… I suppose I’d want something that would let me deal with an enemy from far away.”

“Something long-range? Like a bow or gun?”

“Right.”

“Not bad,” Ging muttered. “What would you do if somebody got into mid- or close-range?”

“Guns can be close-range weapons,” Kite pointed out, then frowned. “But I don’t really want to be stuck with a gun.”

“They’re pretty popular among Conjurers. Real guns are pretty strong weapons, after all, and adding conditions or vows can make it even stronger.”

Kite bit his bottom lip thoughtfully. One of the little _Nen_ lumps on his hand shivered and he refocused on keeping it stable. Seeing them lit up a lightbulb above his head. “Can I have more than one weapon?”

That got Ging to open his eyes and actually look over. “It’s possible. Most people don’t have the _Nen_ capacity to do it, but with enough raw power and probably some restrictions on when or how you can use them, you could manage it.”

The Nen lumps sped up their movement incrementally as Kite grinned. “How much Nen capacity do you think I need?” He did his best to straighten up and look disciplined as Ging scanned him up and down.

“Right now you could probably do two weapons, three if you put a condition on when you can summon each one. Like one only gets used when it’s raining, another only gets used if you’ve been wounded… There’s plenty of room to maneuver in that sense.”

“What if it was a really difficult condition? So that each weapon was hard to get.”

“Probably still three, but you could push for four. How many are you aiming for?”

The lumps spun around one another on the tip of his index finger. “I’m not sure. As many as I can, I guess.”

Ging’s mouth quirked up into a pleased smile. “Sounds like a plan, then.”

 

 

 

A year after that conversation, Kite scowled down at the cartoonish clown in his hand, which was still snickering. “Shut up and roll.”

“I don’t know why you insist on doing this, since there’s only one option, but fine.” It bounced up into the air and a bright yellow “1” spun vertically in its gaping mouth. “Ding ding ding! Number one, coming up!”

Kite reached up as it flattened out, becoming hard and metallic. A single-handed grip formed from its smoothly twisted-together feet that curved backwards to connect to the back of its head. It settled into his palm and as he brought it down in front of him the hat flattened into a guard over his wrist. He drew his other hand through the air in a straight line starting at the hilt; from the vertical line on the hat’s question mark a long, thin blade coalesced beneath his fingers.

Ging watched him carefully, grinning, as Kite brought the saber up to guard. “Getting serious, are we?”

It would have taken more energy than Kite could spare to respond, so he took the moment to catch his breath. He had already been exhausted from using _Ren_ for so long, so bringing out Crazy Slots was probably not the best idea. But keeping Ging at a distance where he wouldn’t be able to land a blow would be easier with the sword in hand. A tradeoff he hoped he wouldn’t end up regretting.

“You’re gonna eat shit,” Crazy Slots said smugly. Ging snorted. Kite sighed tiredly.

 

 

 

“Think back to when you had to fight someone,” Ging instructed, perched by Kite’s side on the crumbling wall of some long-dead city. “What worked to your advantage the most?”

The rest of the team kept working, digging delicately through the dirt to see if they could unearth some relic that would fill in another page in a history textbook. Kite and Ging had already taken their turn and were resting. Or Ging was, since Kite had to study. The fact that all his time was eaten up by training and reading only made him a little bit grumpy. All the books that Ging gave him were fascinating, after all.

“Having a lot of dogs,” Kite answered idly, flipping to the next page of algebra questions and continuing to work through them in a small notebook.

“Okay, _other_ than that.”

Kite looked up at the sky and thought back. He’d run from fights far more often than he’d fought them. But the things that made him good at getting away weren’t very different from the things that had let him get blows in on his attackers. A shovel scraped against rock with unfortunate timing and Kite flinched, mistaking it for a second for the deep-throated snarl of a starving dog.

“… Being unpredictable,” he decided, subtly glancing around the area to double-check that there weren’t any jackals around. Ging nudged his side with an elbow and Kite made himself stop, though the hair on the back of his neck was still standing up.

“Unpredictable, huh? You can definitely build a _Hatsu_ around that. Do you have an idea in mind?”

Another scrape of metal on stone made Kite grind his teeth together. He wouldn’t be able to stop hearing it, now, but there wasn’t anything he could do except bear it. “Not really. If I have multiple weapons it would be easy to surprise an enemy with them, right?”

“You’d have to make it unclear which one you’re getting when, but yes,” Ging agreed. “If you can adapt to having a new weapon before your enemy can adapt to a shift in your fighting style, that definitely puts you at an advantage.”

“Make it unclear…” Kite repeated under his breath, tapping his pencil against the paper already covered in messy numbers. “So the conditions for summoning them shouldn’t be obvious.”

“Right. If each one has a condition you can fulfill subtly, that would be useful. Alternately, it could be an obvious condition with an unpredictable result.”

Kite blinked and looked at him in confusion. “What does that even mean?”

Ging shrugged, spreading his hands out to the side, and grinned. “The easiest way to ensure that your enemy doesn’t know what’s coming is if you don’t know what’s coming either.”

“… Master, I’m sorry, but that’s a terrible idea.”

They left the dig—successful, of course, once Ging had delved into an unstable cave to retrieve the dead city’s historical records, preserved on flaking paper, in a typically adventurous act—with friendly new acquaintances, an amount of money that Kite was uncomfortable thinking about, and an absentminded doodle in a small notebook of an impishly grinning face surrounded by messy numbers.

 

 

 

The first time that Kite had used the saber in a spar, he had done quite badly. Not because he wasn’t good at using it, which would have been embarrassing since he’d been training with a real one for several months, but because every time the metal came close to touching Ging’s skin Kite flinched back.

“For the last time,” Ging had said exasperatedly, “don’t _worry_ about it. You couldn’t put a scratch on me if you tried.”

Even with that assurance it had taken until Ging had actually grabbed the blade with his bare hand and snapped it in half without any visible effort for Kite to try and get used to not holding back.

Currently, Ging was smirking knowingly as Kite fought to keep the tip of the sword from wavering and betraying his fatigue. Not that there was much of a point, as sweat was still dripping down his face and he was struggling to even out his breathing, but allowing his hands to tremble would weaken his guard enough that he would end up with an unsightly new array of bruises.

Ging’s foot shifted an inch and that was the only warning Kite got before in the next instant he was subject to a rapid-fire flurry of blows that he only just managed to avoid being pummeled with. Every movement sent a barrage of pain through already-strained muscles, but an enemy would treat him no better so it was just something to become accustomed to.

 

 

 

“A slot machine,” Kite announced between harsh breaths. He got his guard up well in time to block Ging’s slow strike to his top left, but he’d concentrated too much _Nen_ in his right leg to be able to gather it all in a new place and escape unscathed. “Ugh—that’s what I’m thinking. Ten percent too little,” he added at Ging’s raised eyebrow, flexing his fingers as he watched carefully for where Ging’s _Nen_ was gathering to indicate where he was aiming next.

“I thought that was a terrible idea,” Ging said archly, perfectly unaffected.

Kite huffed, wincing when a blow to his ribs on the right hit an old set of bruises, though he’d gotten his _Ryu_ set up well enough not to get any new ones there. “It _is_. But I’m good at working with what I’ve got, and I’m fast, and I’ll be used to fighting with all of them eventually anyway. It’s a shitty enough condition that I can have lots of weapons, but workable enough that I’m not screwing myself over.”

Ging laughed, as he always did when Kite got tired enough to start cursing. “Fair enough. What kind of slot machine?”

Once he got his rhythm back, it was… not easy, but doable to keep up with Ging’s fluctuating _Nen_ and talk at the same time. Several months of having to entertain Ging with conversation while also reading, which as far as he could tell was the only schooling he was going to get, resulted in his being quite good at multitasking. “Each number is a weapon. Once the weapon’s summoned, I have to use it at least once to get another one.”

“Define ‘using it’.”

“Um… hit something with it?”

“So it doesn’t have to be an enemy? You could just, say, cut a branch off a tree with that sword you’re working on and that would be enough?”

The sword in question, a slightly curved saber with a thicker hand guard than usual, was propped up to lean on Kite’s pack. He’d settled on summoning one just like it before anything else, both because he wasn’t entirely sure how the finished technique would work and because swords were usefully versatile weapons. Not to mention that establishing the ability to summon a strong blade would be helpful for the later, more complicated summons he was planning.

“Yes, that would be enough,” Kite clarified. “Guhh—fourteen percent—”

Ging paused mercifully and let Kite catch his breath from the unexpected hit to the stomach. “Do you know how many weapons you’re going to end up with?”

Kite straightened, put his hands on his hips, and said “Nine.”

“ _Nine?_ ” Ging repeated, his face lighting up. “That’s a ridiculous number. I love it. You’re going to end up with nine weapons if I have to die in the process.”

“I, uh, I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” Kite said, a chill running down his spine at the mere thought. “The randomness of the roulette combined with the needing to use the weapon is enough to allow that many, right?”

“Probably,” Ging said, shrugging. “In the end, Nen abilities largely depend on the person using them. How difficult something is varies according to how talented or powerful the person doing it is. If you end up hitting a wall before the ninth one, it’s also possible to put conditions or vows on the weapons themselves. A weapon that only works once before you have to get another one, or something that only has one type of attack.”

Shifting back into his fighting stance, Kite nodded thoughtfully. “Okay. I’ll stick with simple ones first, probably—like this sword will just be a sword.”

“Fine by me.” Ging’s strike to his knee rebounded as Kite matched his _Ryu_ perfectly. “You can get complicated later. That’ll be fun, weapons that are used in really specific ways can be pretty damn cool.”

 

 

 

Despite his best efforts, Kite couldn’t suppress a gasp of pain when Ging twisted his arm around by the wrist, forcing his shoulders to turn lest something break, and stole the sword from his fingers. Or he would have, had Crazy Slots not dissolved back into smoke the moment that Kite lost his grip on it.

“Good,” Ging said briefly before aiming a blow at Kite’s spine that he had to wrench his back to avoid. The discomfort was insignificant next to the flush of pride he felt at a single word. Last time he had been loath to unmake Crazy Slots when it was his best chance at maintaining a safe distance, but he had very quickly learned, as per usual, that it was better to accept a loss and adapt than to subject himself to unnecessary punishment.

Ging didn’t make another move to attack, but Kite took the precaution of retreating several yards. With every minute the sun dipped lower on the horizon, plunging them into darkness. Kite hoped without believing it would happen that Ging would count that as the end of the spar—he didn’t like to imagine how attempting to make up for a lack of vision with his hearing would go when his heartbeat and ragged breath were so thunderous.

Even when Ging clapped his hands together, stretched, and turned towards their packs Kite stayed where he was and kept his guard up. He knew better than to think it was over until—

“Fifteen hours’s pretty decent, I guess,” Ging said blithely, flopping down onto his bedroll. “But if that’s all you can do, I don’t know how you expect to be able to summon nine functional weapons.”

Kite straightened and slowly breathed out. It would take a few minutes for the adrenaline to fade completely, and he wasn’t looking forward to feeling the full brunt of his exhaustion. “How many do you think I could do?”

Ging hummed and crossed his legs, pillowing his head on his hands as he looked up at the small glints of stars emerging in the night sky. “Five.”

Kite subtly fist pumped, grinning. A solid year of nonstop soreness had paid off, then.

 

 

 

Slot machines weren’t all that complicated once he’d practiced enough that he could take apart a small, handheld one and put it back together again three times in ten minutes. His scribbled designs of what his would look like didn’t have a handle, which changed things slightly—there would have to be a way for the kicker to be triggered without being pulled by the handle’s movement. He would only need one reel, preferably that didn’t take long to land on a number, so the control cam would need to return to its original position after being hit by the kicker. It would be a relatively tiny slot machine, so the gear mechanism slowing down the control cam might not even have to exist, freeing up space…

“You’re really overthinking this, Kite,” was Ging’s contribution when Kite asked his advice circa his five hundredth pushup. “It’s _Nen_. It doesn’t have to function exactly the way a real slot machine does.”

“But that would make adding weapons less complicated, wouldn’t it? If the slot machine is as plainly realistic as possible, that would give me more leeway in terms of how unrealistic the weapons can be.”

“Not really. It might actually make things harder, since you’d have to figure out how to restructure it every time it grows a weapon. I’m not saying having a mechanism to do what you’re describing is a bad idea, but you can just set a condition that the kicker does its thing for a set amount of time when you give it a command to.”

Kite frowned and looked down at the notepad he’d laid out on the ground below his face, tilting his head to the side, perplexed. “That… seems too easy. I can just _do_ it?”

Ging flicked his hat off, making Kite flinch, and patted his head. “If it makes sense to you, you can do it. The main thing is making sure you know what you’re doing. If that means you need to figure out a bunch of detailed stuff about how every gear moves, that’s what it means. But putting a lot of moving parts in the machine itself will most likely just take up a lot of… aah, what’s the word I’m looking for… memory. From what I can tell, Conjurers have to visualize what they’re summoning perfectly every time in order for it to work, so the less complex, the better.”

Kite, his face a light shade of pink, hummed thoughtfully and picked one hand up to nudge his hat off the pad and flip to a new page. He’d gotten a new notebook for precisely this purpose. “That would have been nice to know when I started planning a week ago.”

“Eh,” Ging said, “you didn’t ask until just now, so.” Turning the page meant Kite wobbled for a second and Ging, sitting cross-legged on his back, added “Fifty more pushups. For each arm. One at a time.”

Kite sighed but didn’t make things worse by protesting.  
 

 

 

Actually trying to Conjure something apparently necessitated a lot of staring at empty air and attempting to convince himself he’d already succeeded. It made sense, in a way, but for a long time only resulted in frustration and headaches.

He’d amassed a small treasure trove of pieces of ceramic and metal that he spent nearly all his time with in one way or another. Ging had said, between small fits of laughter, that he needed to be intimately familiar with how the materials could be experienced with all five senses, so a certain amount of time was spent feeling ridiculous as he contemplated the taste of clay.

Kite sighed, suppressing the urge to complain as he once again peeked and found that his hands were empty. It would have been nice to end up with a gear or something, at least, but from the way things were going it seemed that he would get the whole package or nothing. He closed his eyes again and thought back to the designs he’d sketched out in his notebook and stared at for endless hours over the course of a month. A laughing face, cartoonishly exaggerated, with the reel in its mouth; it would only have numbers that corresponded to weapons he had successfully summoned once, and from that point on he would only be able to do so if its number came up. A clownish design, his own subtle mockery of what a bad idea he knew the whole system was, comprised of just a head, hands, and feet. All ceramic that would be unmade into smoke rather than shattering if hit before he could draw a weapon.

He knew what the smooth surface of glazed ceramic felt like, could call it up in his mind instantaneously and with perfect clarity. It would be slippery to the touch, not wet but untextured in every place but what was defined by thin, shallow grooves; the outline of the eyes, for example, and that of the question mark on its hat. Said hat would come to a sharp point, the only one on the slot machine except for the very tips of its strands of slightly curled hair. The feeling of pressing a point to his hands from every angle had been unpleasant, but he could visualize it, how the surfaces met in a subtle curve that prevented them from forming a dangerous edge. Everything else would be round—the brim of the hat, the clown’s red nose, the four fingers and bent thumbs, the shoes. It would be about the size of his own head, to accommodate its turning into weapons in a variety of sizes. Light, though, weightless enough to be held in one hand or, alternately, left hanging freely in the air.

The reel would trill when it spun, he’d decided. Slot machines did that, and dinged cheerfully when they stopped. Having dedicated himself to the idea, he damn well was going to go all the way. A G, the thirty-second key on a piano, repeated each time a number went by, which would slow down and eventually shift to the G an octave up when the final number was chosen. The initial kick to the reel would set it spinning at a speed of 200 revolutions per minute, from which it would slow to a stop over five seconds. He’d figure out the bit where it transformed into a weapon when he got there.

The only issue that occasionally wormed its way into his mind when he was trying to concentrate, was that if the slot machine always started in the same place and always spun at the same rate, it would nearly always land on the same number. To ensure any actual differentiation, the initial rpm would have to be randomized every time. But since he would grow accustomed to the movement of the reel over time, if he controlled the initial kick directly it was conceivable that he could subconsciously skew the result of the spin so that he ended up with a weapon he favored. Which wasn’t really a bad thing, in his opinion, but it would defeat the purpose of creating the slot machine condition in the first place. The mechanism would need to have some kind of autonomy, separate from what he wanted or was thinking, something that would always produce a random result regardless of what the situation was.

How he could go about creating something that had a sort of life of its own, he had no idea. It seemed impossible. It would be easier to simply set a condition that the reel spun at a random speed every time, though it would be difficult to prove that it was _actually_ random.

Frustration raising its head and making him lose concentration, Kite sighed again and opened his eyes.

Bouncing slightly in the air just above his open hands, a clown’s face with a wide-open mouth, a pointy hat, and curved fingers and shoes accentuating it stared at him.

“Goddamn,” it said. “Would you look at that? I exist.”

“Gaaauhh,” Kite said.

“Eloquent.”

Kite goggled, reaching up to close his fingers around it. It weighed next to nothing and was made up of, as he’d imagined, smooth ceramic. The reel in its mouth showed only a pink tongue, as there were no weapons it could summon yet. The angry slant of its eyes matched its snide tone well—he hadn’t even begun to think of giving it a voice, but it had one nonetheless. Its consonants clicked mechanically and it definitely spoke aloud, not into his head, though its mouth never moved.

“How are you doing that?” he asked it.

“What?”

“Speaking.”

“How are _you_ doing it?”

Kite’s brow furrowed at the unhelpful and frankly nonsensical answer. “I have a real mouth and tongue, and throat, and lungs. I’m supposed to be able to speak. How can you do it if I didn’t create some way for you to?”

“Wow, not even thirty seconds old and I’m already getting the third degree,” the clown face snorted. Its scoff had a metallic edge, like gears grinding together. “How the hell am I supposed to know? You’re the one who poofed me into the world.”

Though it was made of ceramic it still managed to somehow bounce in place, its face compressing and extending as it snapped at him. Kite scowled back, annoyed in part because it was just his luck that the _Hatsu_ he’d finally managed to summon was foul-tempered and rude but mostly because he knew it was right. Everything he’d learned about _Nen_ abilities indicated that a technique should do exactly what the user intended. Something, clearly, had gone awry.

He heaved a sigh and stood, still carefully cupping the clown head in his hands. It might be a frustrating conversationalist, but as he looked at it giddy butterflies were multiplying in his stomach. He’d done it, so much time and effort spent aiming for this exact moment and he’d _done_ it! With some unexpected side effects, but he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. And he certainly wasn’t going to let the thing disappear before he could show it off to Ging.

Said man was just down a hill fiddling with the dials on a small radio that emitted nothing but static, a luxury purchase he’d casually passed the money for to Kite when it was requested. The cavalier attitude that Ging took toward money still baffled Kite, who couldn’t shake the instinct to skimp on anything that wasn’t an absolute necessity. But the radio was nice to have out in the wilderness, where it would occasionally pick up a news station or an audio play.

“Master!” Kite called, skipping across the large rocks littered along the slope as he made his way down. Just before Ging looked up he hurriedly put his hands behind his back, the clown grumbling something inaudible at being waved around like this, how inconsiderate. Kite bounded up to Ging’s side, and while the surprise might be spoiled by how he was beaming from ear to ear it was still spectacular to see Ging’s confused frown break into a wide grin.

“Well??” Ging said, gesturing expectantly. “Show me!!”

Kite drew out the moment as much as he could stand to, dramatically bringing his hands to his sides while the clown was still hidden. As much as he wanted to whip it out and bask in the knowledge that he had his very own _Nen_ ability, it was probably the most wonderful feeling in the world to have Ging looking at him with such a brilliant light of curiosity and anticipation in his eyes.

He didn’t push it, though, and held up the ceramic clown face in front of his chest with a flourish. “I summoned it! Just now! I didn’t even—I just opened my eyes and it was there!!”

Ging’s face lit up like the sun and he punched the air, practically jumping in place with his enthusiasm. “Yes!! Yes, oh man, Kite, this is _so_ cool! It’s just how you imagined it?”

Kite thought he was probably going to either cry or explode with happiness. Maybe both. Unadulterated pride was a truly overwhelming feeling. “Well—yes, it’s got the, the hat and shoes and the reel. It doesn’t have any numbers yet, but once I manage the sword it’ll be number one, and then the others can be added. Uh, there is something, master, are—are _Nen_ abilities supposed to be able to speak?”

Ging gave him a funny look, still beaming. “To speak? Not all of them, and most don’t since it’s not all that practical. Wh—”

The tips of his fingers brushed against the clown’s hands and it shrieked deafeningly “ _HANDS OFF THE MERCHANDISE, ASSHOLE!!_ ”

Ging’s hands jerked back and he held them up defensively, his eyebrows nearly hitting his hairline. The clown evaporated into a cloud of white smoke the instant the final syllable was said. As it dissipated, Kite was left staring down at his shaking hands.

“I—” he stuttered, frozen in place and unable to make himself look up at Ging’s face. “I’m s-so sorry, master, I didn’t—I didn’t make it say that, I wouldn’t, I would n- _never_ , I swear, I—”

Ging’s left arm lowered in his peripheral vision and Kite flinched instinctively for the first time in months when the other hand came to rest on his shoulder.

“How did it say it, then?”

“I don’t know,” Kite said, his voice wavering. “I’m sorry, I don’t know, it just talks on its own, I don’t have any control over it. I didn’t mean to let it do that, I was thinking that it should control itself somewhat but that was just about the reel speed, I never gave it a voice—or I don’t think I did but I guess I m-must have, somehow, since it has one…”

He faltered and fell into silence, his hands balling into loose, trembling fists. Silence reigned for a few eternal moments.

“Cool,” Ging said.

Kite’s panic thoughts screeched to a halt and he forgot himself enough to look up at Ging. Ging, for his part, looked completely unperturbed and was examining him interestedly again. “You’re—you’re not mad?”

“Uh, no. Why would I be mad?”

“Because,” Kite waved his hands vaguely, answering the question despite his better judgement telling him he should just let it go and not poke the bear. “Because it yelled at you?”

“Whatever,” Ging said, shrugging. “You said you aren’t in control of it, so it wasn’t your fault. And it wasn’t even that bad. Kind of hilarious, actually.”

He chuckled and shifted his hand up, slipping his fingers underneath the edge of Kite’s hat so that it nearly slid off his head and he could ruffle Kite’s hair. Kite breathed out slowly, tension draining from his muscles. “Oh.”

“How _does_ it speak, though? I’ve heard of _Nen_ constructs that take the shape of lifelike animals, but those all have preprogrammed movements—extensive ones, in some cases, but they’re certainly controlled by the user. But you’re saying that this… clown slot machine has a mind of its own? You should think up a name for it, by the way.”

A slightly affronted frown replaced the relief on Kite’s face. “I did think of a name. Crazy Slots, remember? The mad clown. I’m sure I told you.”

Ging blinked slowly, opened his mouth, closed it again, then closed his eyes. “I thought you were kidding,” he said, sounding slightly strangled.

Kite stiffened and felt his face heat up. “Wh—why would you- Is it a bad name?? Should I change it??”

Ging picked his hand up from Kite’s head and pressed it against his mouth, nearly doubling over.

“Master!!” Kite scowled (not pouted, he _definitely wasn’t_ pouting) and turned away with a ‘hmpf’. A small, muffled snort came from where Ging was evidently struggling not to collapse on the ground, but he ignored it and screwed up his face in concentration again, reaching for the feeling he’d had just before opening his eyes and trying to replicate it—

“Oh no,” Crazy Slots said. “Ooooh no, it’s stuck, the name has stuck and I can’t change it. Wow. Thanks.”

Ging straightened, his face still flushed from trying not to bust out laughing, and Kite glared at both of them. “It’s not _that_ bad! It’s—it’s about how unpredictable the result is…”

Crazy Slots turned around to face Ging, who raised his eyebrows at it with an anticipatory grin. “I’m blaming this on you.”

“ _I’m_ not the one who named you!” Ging said defensively.

“But you’re a dick and now my name is Crazy Slots out of spite!! So thanks, both of you, wow, what a great first day of existence this is.” It turned again, its hand bonking Kite on the forehead. He jerked back and rubbed the spot, glaring at it. “Listen. Listen. I’m naming the weapons from now on. You don’t get to name anything. Just leave it to me.”

“Wh—you can’t just decide that!” Kite protested, certain he was beet red again because Ging was howling with laughter, clapping his hands. “They’re my weapons!”

“Yeah, well, given your track record you’d probably name them something like ‘Pointy Swoosh’. Besides, I’m literally the manifestation of your aura so technically you’re still naming them. Just through me, so they won’t fucking suck.”

Kite scowled but didn’t protest. It was, technically, true, even if he couldn’t control what Crazy Slots said if he tried. And he’d been trying for several minutes now, so it was certain. “Fine. You’ll name the damn weapons. Not that there’ll be any for a while.”

“Eh, I gotta plan ahead. Prevent future disasters. And there’s that sword, shouldn’t be long before you can do that one.”

Kite spared a glance toward Ging, who had given up and was sitting cross-legged on the ground to watch the proceedings gleefully. He shrugged.

“Well, what are your ideas, then? So we can make sure they don’t _fucking suck_.”

Crazy Slots did a funny wiggle in midair, perhaps an attempt at puffing out a nonexistent chest, and laughed metallically. “Well, since you asked. For the first weapon, an elegant saber with no adornments, just a trustworthy sword and your own skill to show it off with— _Prima Cadenza_.”

Kite blinked. Looked at Ging. Ging spread his hands out and shrugged. Kite looked back to Crazy Slots. Its expression didn’t change, but somehow radiated smugness.

“Shit,” Kite muttered, “that’s really cool.”

 

\--

 

Having Conjured Crazy Slots, Kite found that it was easier to call Prima Cadenza to his hand. It still took weeks, but compared to the days that dragged on and on where he’d had to spend all his time all but eating metal it was a walk in the park. He already knew what metal tasted and smelled and felt like. The only thing was to become familiar with the weight of a sword in his hand, its balance and movement, and to practice visualizing sharp edges.

Kite resisted the urge to wince as his gloves rubbed against his palms. People were already glancing sideways at him; he’d given up trying to puzzle out why they objected to his presence in public buildings but never cared about Ging. If anything, Ging’s proclivity for tossing on whatever clothes were easiest to reach in his pack should have made him the more distasteful presence, but he always breezed past such concerns by force of presence alone. Maybe Kite still exuded an aura of street rat. It wouldn’t surprise him, though it was annoying to consider since he kept himself fastidiously clean.

The memory of being torn over spending money on shampoo brought a wry smile to his lips. If his past self could see him now; a foot taller, consistently able to eat his fill, significantly stronger, and admittedly significantly vainer. Only recently had he gotten used to the idea of having money to spare, and said money was still carefully doled out so that it would last as long as possible. That said, it was both pleasing and practical to test a variety of hair care products—he needed one with the wherewithal to combat weeks spent in the woods, since if he ignored how dirty it was getting peoples’ sidelong glances tended to get tinged with disgust. If the shampoo smelled nice, that was a plus.

He’d only just washed his hair when they got into town last night, though, so it couldn’t have been that making people stare disapprovingly. Kite contemplated asking Ging why it was happening, but in all likelihood he’d get the same answer he’d gotten the first time: a dismissive gesture of one hand, a sound between a snort and a raspberry, and a mumble of “Social conventions”. With a bonus grumpy reminder that Ging didn’t like repeating himself. It was easier to simply keep to himself as Ging straightened out their travel plans.

Just as he came to that conclusion Ging glanced back from where he stood at the travel guide’s countertop and waved him forward. Kite ducked past the queues of prospective hikers and potted plants, careful not to bump into anything with the hefty pack on his back, and quickly made his way to Ging’s side.

“Sign there,” Ging said vaguely, gesturing to the papers laid out on the counter. One stack already had Ging’s illegible signature on the line across the bottom; the other was blank. Kite didn’t bother to read it before signing, ignoring how his hand twinged with pain and devoting his attention to what Ging was saying.

“The plant I’ve been hired to find is at the apex of the mountain. That’s the only place it grows, apparently, and the way up there’s pretty dangerous. Hence why they need a Hunter to do it. It’s a few days there, up the mountain, get the plant, down the mountain, a few days back. Most hikers go in groups, but we’ll be fine on our own, not to mention faster.”

“Are we in a rush?” Kite asked, glancing at the other small huddles around the room. Everyone was bundled up in one way or another, and none looked inclined to hurrying anywhere.

“It’s only that I find this kind of stuff boring,” Ging admitted with a shrug. “It’s just a plant, as far as I’m concerned. But it’s a great nature preserve and we were in the area.”

Kite nodded. Ging tended to pick up whichever jobs took his fancy when he wasn’t devoted entirely to an ambitious new project. It was a good way of killing time, and Kite wasn’t about to complain. Doing something that wasn’t archaeology-related every once in a while was nice, especially when it involved hikes through the wilderness.

The travel guide, a short and spindly young man, scurried back to them and announced that everything was in order, thank you very much, and the all-terrain vehicle that would take them to the edge of the preserve would arrive shortly just outside the entrance, have a nice day.

 

 

 

The preserve itself spanned miles, easily the size of Skuplacenk city (alternately known as the Blustery city, with a total area of 234 square miles. Ging quizzed Kite on the details). The mountain they aimed for jutted out of the ground in harsh peaks in the very center; surrounding its snowy heights a vast swampland rejected any attempts to make the preserve viable for the construction of a city. It would have been torturous to slog through the miles of mud between where the car dropped them off and the base of the mountain. Thankfully, intrepid guides had long since located and marked off a safe path one could take along the massive above-ground tree roots of the Grand Willows.

They weren’t as tall as the World Tree, but they were far wider and there were many more of them. The trunk alone had a radius of fifty feet, and the drooping branches added fifty feet again to each side. They towered overhead, strange voices continuously crying out from above. The ample shade and territory provided by the curtain of leaves provided the perfect habitat for a plethora of animal life to take up residence in the preserve. Every so often the wind would send the draping greenery into a series of undulating waves, a graceful and repeated bow accompanied by the musical groaning of strained wood, that sent birds and apes scurrying out of their homes for a moment, all flitting through the air and rending it with their loudest warning calls—it was their territory. There could be no doubt about that.

More than once Ging had to grab Kite’s shoulder and keep him from walking straight off the tree root and into the muck because he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the canopy above. His neck was beginning to ache with how he was craning his head back, twisting around, struggling to make out the vague shapes of wild creatures who were watching him back. It didn’t help that the brim of his hat kept getting in the way, but he was loath to take if off in case something happened to it.

“Come on,” Ging finally growled irritably. “You’ll have plenty of time to look at them tonight, when they’re trying to eat you. Or you could fall in the mud, get trapped, and have them eat you immediately. Either would be a great time to take notes.”

Kite flushed and kept his eyes on the ground from then on, deftly following Ging across the untamed swamplands. Of course, the ground had its fair share of fascinating plant life and amphibians, so it didn’t take long for him to get distracted again. He’d just managed to convince a dull brown lizard to climb onto his hand when Ging cleared his throat and it scurried away. Kite stood hurriedly and put his hands behind his back, fighting the urge to scurry away himself at Ging’s look of exasperation.

The rough pathway that wasn’t reliable enough to be called a trail was, by and large, quite far from the homes of any truly dangerous predators. The Grand Willow swamplands were home to a number of magical beasts, some of which were near to being on the list of endangered species. Hence why the land had been declared an untouchable nature preserve despite the wishes of the corporations slavering to make a profit off the gorgeous landscape with hotels. Even if it had been legal, anyone making an attempt would have had a hard time fighting their way through oversized snakes that flattened themselves out to ride wind currents and amorphous predators whose only defined features were teeth and eyes.

Such predators didn’t take kindly to the presence of intruders, even intruders who gave their territories a wide berth—as Ging and Kite discovered when a particularly aggressive member of the _Chrysaora mutata_ species drew itself out of the mud and lashed out with its stinging tentacles. An easy to avoid attack; they both were well out of the way by the time the blow landed on the root where they had stood. The tree was not so lucky and its wood splintered under the force with a terrific crack.

The creature subsided into the mud, its coloration shifting until it was camouflaged again. It was possible to keep track of it as it swam, ripples following its trail. Perhaps unwisely, Kite knelt on the thin outcropping of land at the tree’s base he’d retreated to and leaned forward to peer at it more closely. _Chrysaora mutata_ , common name Freshwater Warping Jellyfish, was an increasingly rare magical beast that hunted aggressively by wrapping its variable number of limbs around its prey and dragging it below the surface of the water to be slowly digested. Its poison was more than capable of paralyzing a grown human with pain, as some unfortunate bushwhackers had discovered before access to the swamps was heavily restricted.

Seeing it in person was a much more satisfying experience than reading about it, Kite discovered with no small glee. It was beautiful, an invertebrate of indeterminate form, capable of assuming any shape and shifting to another in an instant. Among the species of magical beasts living amongst the Grand Willows, it was easily the most dangerous.

Not particularly dangerous to them, though. As another tentacle struck out, aiming to sweep Kite’s legs out from under him, he leapt up to take a grip on the sturdy bark of the Grand Willow’s trunk and hold himself out of range. From directly above the creature it was easier to admire the lacy folds of its umbrella head, the deadly ruffles of its oral arms. Just barely, they shimmered white and caught the light where they didn’t perfectly match the color of the mud. Among the limbs that didn’t retract or extend it was possible to make out the remains of its old prey, still providing it with sustenance. Kite had to appreciate its ability to make a meal last over several weeks, an efficient way of living that humans unfortunately couldn’t emulate.

“Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” Ging yelled from where he stood across the water. Kite ignored him for just a second longer as the jellyfish drew its limbs into itself, its umbrella swelling, and for a moment oil-slick colors played across its membranous skin before a single, much longer extremity shot out directly toward where Kite clung to the tree.

Making the jump across the water was nothing he hadn’t done before. Enhancement wasn’t his strongest category by far, but over so many months of harsh sparring he had definitely developed a knack for it. But the lengthened limb was just slightly more dexterous than he had expected and it managed to wrench itself sideways at enough of an angle to slice through the thick material of his pant leg with its microscopic nematocysts. Kite hissed “ _Ughshitdammit_ ” under his breath as the feeling of cold air against his calf was replaced by hot, shooting pain that rapidly traveled throughout his entire leg. It buckled when he landed and he ended up on one knee by Ging’s side, shuddering. Already, the wound was blistering red.

Before he could even look up he felt Ging’s hand grip his collar and drag him to his feet. Putting weight on his leg sent pain ricocheting from his toes to his hip, but he kept his balance and furiously blinked until his vision was clear. Ging’s face came into focus and Kite winced as it became clear that he was _not_ pleased.

“Can you walk?” he asked Kite evenly. Kite nodded shakily. It would be hellish, but he could do it. Ging pointed at the jellyfish, which was steadily creeping through the mud toward them. “Then kill it.”

Kite simply stared at him for long enough that Ging raised his eyebrows and indicated the creature with a small tilt of his head. “That it came so far out of its territory means it’s not going to just leave us alone. And you’ll face far worse than this if you intend to be a Hunter of any real distinction. Unless it’s more than you can handle?”

It wasn’t really a question; it never had been. A challenge, rather. Kite closed his eyes and fought to catch his breath for a second, pushing away the frantic signals his body was blasting through his nerves. He hadn’t tried to summon Crazy Slots while so acutely distracted before, and it took a few tries before he was able to clear his mind enough to do it.

“Shit, bro,” the clown said, spinning around in his palm. “Way to get fucked up.”

“Roll,” Kite ordered through gritted teeth. Crazy Slots sighed and did its requisite spin before inevitably landing on the number one and transforming into Prima Cadenza. It settled into Kite’s hand just in time for him to slice off the tip of an incoming tentacle, severing the limb and knocking it away with the blade so that none of it touched him. The jellyfish had no mouth and could not scream, but a convulsion did run throughout its body and it pulled all its extremities back into itself so that the partially-digested remains of its prey were left to sink into the water.

At times, previously, Kite had pushed through his limits by refusing to acknowledge when his body told him to stop. Mental blocks were far more difficult to overcome than physical ones, and once he had figured out how to hurdle over those manipulating his body in turn had become, more or less, easy. It was a sensation akin to operating a machine, or pulling a puppet’s strings from a distance. The pain was happening to someone else and he was simply conducting the rhythm of their movements.

The practice came in handy now, when giving in to the body’s weakness would mean making a fatal misstep. Tentacles systematically crushed every surface his feet touched, and in return every single one that came into range was sliced apart by his sword. The creature’s glutinous insides seeped from its wounds. The book he’d consulted about the beasts of the swampland hadn’t mentioned whether Freshwater Warping Jellyfish had nervous systems, but given how it could track his movement it could likely sense its surroundings in some way and may have also had some conception of pain in its brainless, primal organs.

But whether or not it felt pain didn’t matter, he recited to himself. One of its long limbs stuck to the trunk of the tree behind him and stretched until it was taut. He had killed animals before, always reluctantly but quickly; any hurt he could spare them was a regret lifted off his shoulders. But he had to focus solely on survival, as he always had, or risk being martyred by his foolish kindness. The jellyfish launched forward out of the water, dragging itself up the tree trunk so that it could unleash a multitude of short tentacles against him, all more agile that those it had used previously.

He knew how to break his limits, but he also knew which limits could conceivably be broken. Taking another hit like the one that was still oozing agony from his calf would be the end—as it stood, he had perhaps another two minutes before his body overrode his will. Every step he had to take dodging pieces of the creature’s body as they reached for him and subsequently were cleaved off lessened that time. The jellyfish’s umbrella undulated against the tree trunk, squirming and dripping viscous fluid from its plethora of wounds. Each cut he made slowed it, gave it less material in its own body to work with. It wasn’t long before he was able to step forward into an opening and thrust his sword forward into its mucilaginous umbrella.

As the blade neared its flesh he reflexively closed his eyes, turning his face away from the moment when it hit the creature's body and viscous fluid sprayed through the air—

And stumbled backwards as a wall of cloth rammed into him, pushing him off his feet. Accustomed to regaining his balance on the head of a pin Kite only went back one step, opening his eyes again in shock.

The creature, not dead in the slightest, had retracted its body away from where Kite had aimed and lashed out with a frantic arm that stretched past him not two feet from his face, digging into the ground some ways back. If he hadn't been moved- Kite swallowed hard and looked up at Ging's thunderous face. His cloak was still billowing out behind him with the speed at which he'd moved to push Kite out of the way; with his back to the creature he had his right forearm pressed against its venomous limb, redirecting it and keeping it at bay. Kite saw with a lurch that below Ging's torn sleeve, blood was trickling down his arm.

"What the _hell_ are you doing with your eyes closed?" Ging hissed. Kite didn't have a chance to respond at all before Ging was looking away, his eyes tracking the rapid retraction of the creature's arm. Three things happened at once: Kite flinched as the ragged tendril dragged across Ging's arm, opening the wound further; Ging pivoted and grabbed the end of the limb as it passed him; Ging shouted "Down!" to him. Kite dropped to the ground without thinking, craning his neck up to see Ging wrench the creature out of its mooring and spin it around in a circle. Its arm cut through the air above Kite's head and it shrieked, writhing in midair. Ging slammed it into the very tree trunk it had clung to and let go. The thing retracted its arm, but before it could extend another Kite smoothly dove forward, rolling under its flailing mass and driving Prima Cadenza up into the cartilaginous structure underneath its umbrella. Its body spasmed as he ran it through, thick and clear fluid dripping down over his wrists to splatter across the knotted wood at his feet. This time, Kite watched its death throes with his eyes wide open. Only when he was certain it was dead did he wrench his sword free.

The creature's body stayed slumped over on the tree, splayed limply and dripping from every cut it had taken. Kite spun Prima Cadenza in his hands and dug the tip into the dirt—" _Hey!! Watch it, asshole!!_ " Crazy Slots objected—using the leverage to push himself to his feet. "Shut up," he said vaguely as he dismissed the weapon, smoke fading into the air as Ging approached him. Kite shifted his weight from foot to foot nervously, unable to take his eyes off of Ging's bleeding arm and the subtle twitching of his fingers.

"... Ging," he ventured, "are you oka-"

As closely as he'd been looking at Ging's arm, he didn't see it move before a bright pain lanced across his left eye and he was knocked flat on his back. He rolled with the force instinctively and came up in a crouch to be met with the sight of Ging's crossed arms and furious glare.

"That," he said, pointing to the spot he'd punched Kite, "is where that thing's arm would've gone _through your head_ . What on earth were you thinking? You _knew_ it could dodge faster than you could kill it. You were as good as dead."

Kite pressed a hand to where his eye was already swelling, wincing. With each word his shoulders hunched a bit more. He fumbled for an explanation as Ging raised his eyebrows expectantly. The obvious answer didn't seem like a strong enough reason, but it was all he had. "I didn't want to watch it die," he admitted lamely.

Ging regarded him silently for a long moment before speaking again, less angrily but just as seriously. "I brought you along with me on the assumption that you weren't going to pull stunts like closing your eyes in the middle of a fight. Killing things is part of a Hunter's job- there's no getting around that. If you can't handle it..."

"No-!" Kite clambered to his feet and straightened his back, curling his hands into fists. "I- I can do it. I'm sorry. It won't happen again."

Ging examined his face and steadily his expression eased into a grin. "Alright. Good." The air itself relaxed as he stepped forward and clapped Kite stiffly on the shoulder. "That last attack was pretty cool, though. All the practicing with the sword paid off."

"Definitely," Kite agreed, tentatively assuming things were back to normal. The adrenaline was fading and there was an annoying ringing in his ears. He pressed a hand to his head and made a face as it throbbed.

"Hmm," Ging muttered, squinting at him. "Looks like I got you pretty good there. Sorry.

"... What?" he asked, raising his eyebrows as Kite blinked at him in surprise.

"Oh, I-" Kite hesitated. There was no non-awkward way to admit that he wasn't used to people apologizing for hitting him. He cast about for something else to say. "I think. That I have a concussion."

Ging's expression went from mild curiosity to an almost comical level of concern, his eyebrows shooting up even higher. Kite quickly dropped his hand and smiled, waving away the issue and backtracking. "It's not a bad one, I mean- I've had worse, and it's definitely better than a jellyfish arm through the head. I'll be fine once I've rested a bit."

The time was coming for them to find shelter anyway—once the sun dipped low enough in the sky, the light wouldn’t be able to penetrate the thick canopy anymore. Their best bet would be to find a sturdy branch high above ground level that didn’t already have a nest of territorial birds on it. One fight had been bad enough on his leg, and the added disorientation of getting smacked left Kite more than a little bit dizzy. That wouldn’t compare to what Ging was enduring, of course, since he’d taken a blow to the arm as well as wrapped both his hands around the stinging tentacle. Imagining the pain his leg was in multiplied twice over was enough to make guilt lay like a rock in his chest.

“Master,” he ventured again, fisting one hand in the sleeve of his other arm, “are you alright?”

Ging glanced down at his hands and shrugged. “It hurts, but I’ll live. The venom will only last a few hours, and then we should be fine. The cuts themselves might take a while to heal, but hey—” he grinned suddenly, roguishly. “What better time to practice Enhancing your healing, eh?”

Kite opened his mouth, but found himself speechless with a mix of relief and dismay. Both were quickly subsumed by a burst of laughter that he could admit was, perhaps, just this side of hysterical. It seemed that there was really nothing that could slow Ging down for a second.

 

 

 

Night fell.

They found the sort of branch they were looking for in short order, which was good for multiple reasons. Not the least among these was that Kite had taken about two steps before his leg gave out entirely and refused to do anything more than twitch and hurt. It was extraordinary how what all but incapacitated Kite didn’t even make Ging flinch; despite his own wounds he proved himself capable of picking Kite up and carrying him like a backpack. Kite had wrapped his arms around Ging’s shoulders to take some of the weight, hoping that Ging wouldn’t notice the heat of Kite’s blush on his shoulder. He’d gotten stronger, that was undeniable, but he clearly still had a ways to go.

It wasn’t purely embarrassing, though. Searching the area for a workable place to set up camp, Kite had plenty of time to reflect that physically speaking, this was the closest he’d ever been to Ging. It would have been nice if it hadn’t required them both to be painfully injured to happen, but he wasn’t about to start complaining. Some of his dogs had been exuberant snugglers, like Socket Face and her space-heater body, and over the years—nearly three, now—he had missed having the comfort of another warm presence. Ging, evidently, didn’t share the sentiment.

Not that he had never laid a finger on Kite. They sparred, obviously, and he expressed his happiness in claps on the shoulder or, in especially proud moments, pats on the head. But he wasn’t one for hugs, let alone snuggles.

Ging had clambered up the side of a Grand Willow without breaking a sweat and promptly set up their sleeping arrangements. The temperature would nearly hit freezing in the night so they couldn’t lose any of their layers, but wool blankets would be enough. Hooked onto each of their belts and extending to a post driven into the wood, a tether and belay would catch them if they happened to slip off the branch in the night. Unlikely, but it was best to be cautious.

Kite, propped up against the tree trunk with his leg lying flat, watched curiously as Ging puzzled over their supply of drinking water. “Is something wrong, master?”

“Ah, not really. I was just thinking that salt water would be good for cleaning out our cuts, but we don’t quite have the supplies. There’s plenty of wood to boil some of the swamp water, but the light would attract way too much attention to be worth it. Shit, I wish we had some vinegar, that’s good for washing jellyfish stings…”

He rubbed his chin, looking between their bottles of water. “Hell. Sorry, Kite, I guess we’ll just have to bandage ‘em and hope they don’t get infected before tomorrow morning.”

“That’s fine.” Kite shifted uneasily where he sat, the weight of guilt redoubling in his stomach. “Master, I… I’m sorry you got hurt protecting me. It was a stupid mistake, closing my eyes like that.”

Ging hummed quietly, a neutral sound acknowledging that he’d heard without conveying a real response. He busied himself digging out their portable kit of medical supplies and rolling up Kite’s pant leg enough that he could press an antiseptic wipe to the cut. Kite winced at the sting, but it was a different quality pain than the toxin—a cleaner pain.

“You’re not wrong, but don’t beat yourself up about it,” Ging said finally. He glanced up and smiled wryly, tapping his finger on his own cheek. “I already did that for you.”

Kite pressed his fingers gingerly to the bruise over his cheekbone and smiled tentatively back, relaxing incrementally as he was assured that Ging was in a good enough mood to crack jokes.

“The most important thing is to know what you did wrong, and to…?”

“Not do it again,” Kite finished.

“Right. And you already said it wouldn’t happen again, so that’s that.” Ging made short work of wrapping bandages around Kite’s calf and tugging the hem of his pants back down to his ankle. “As for my arm, if it means you’ll stop worrying you could always kiss it better.”

He laughed. Kite blinked slowly, entirely sure there was a joke he was missing. “Kiss—what? How would that help?”

Ging blinked, pausing in the middle of handing off the wipes and bandages to him. “Oh, right. Uh, generally kissing a wound is… something family members do, usually for their children. Like, oh you scraped your knee and it’s upsetting, let me kiss it better. It doesn’t actually do anything, it’s just something to get kids to stop crying. An affectionate gesture, I guess.”

Tearing open the pack for a new antiseptic wipe, Kite frowned and contemplated the information. Definitely not something he would’ve heard about as a child. He still wasn’t entirely sure where the joke was in his doing it to Ging, but maybe it related to how hopelessly outmatched he was in comparison. It _was_ rather ridiculous to think of Ging as the child in the situation. The gesture would be turned on its head, then—the kiss would be to make Kite feel better rather than Ging.

Having figured it out, he carefully filed the new concept away in the back of his mind, as he did for all things normal children would have learned long ago.

“I see,” he said. “Is there anything I can do for your hands?”

Ging flexed his fingers slightly, remaining still so that Kite could wrap up his forearm. “Not really. The toxin will fade with time. By tomorrow it’ll be all but gone.”

Kite tied off the bandage and slid his hands down to cup Ging’s, inspecting his palm. The nematocysts didn’t leave large puncture wounds, but the skin was definitely irritated; as with Kite’s leg and Ging’s forearm, there were clusters of blisters where the protein in the toxin (‘porin’, he was pretty sure) attacked the victim’s cells. Despite the reassurance he’d gotten just moments prior, guilt still ate away at his conscience.

The words _something family members do_ echoed in his mind and, impulsively, he leaned down and pressed his lips lightly against the roughened skin of Ging’s palm.

Ging didn’t move in the slightest. Kite hurriedly let go of his hand and sat back, busying himself with putting away the medical supplies. He was abruptly glad for the darkness around them because it would hide how furiously he was blushing and how he couldn’t bring himself to look up at Ging’s face.

The silence stretched until after the kit had been safely stashed away again and the tethers triple-checked. Around them the night was rife with the rustle of insects and nocturnal birds, of small squirrels and apelike magical beasts. It was peaceful, despite the deep ache in his bones. Being hurt by an animal wasn’t the same as being hurt by a person; animals were incapable of malicious intent. They were just doing what they were born to do. It wasn’t something he could hold against them.

He’d only just stopped feeling so acutely embarrassed when Ging, settled down to sleep sitting up next to Kite, leaned sideways incrementally so that their shoulders pressed together.

Kite nearly flinched away in surprise, but after the initial shock his tension unwound and, a wash of utter contentment smothering his pain, he eased his way into sleep savoring Ging’s approximation of an affectionate gesture.

 

\--

 

Sometime in the night the toxin faded to nothing. At one point, before the sun broke through the canopy, Kite stirred and noted that his leg wasn’t throbbing in time to his heartbeat, which was nice. Ging’s weight was still leaning against him at that point, though the second time he woke up it was because Ging had shifted to his feet and was sifting through his pack.

“Morning,” he said.

“Morning,” Kite answered, stifling a yawn. “Are we setting out?”

“Depends. How’s your leg?”

“Stiff, but fine.”

“Good. My arm was just about the same. Do some stretches and then we’ll head for the mountain.”

Kite nodded, clambering to his feet. The cut was still sore, but it was nothing that would get in his way. A small bird, its plumage iridescent green, fluttered around his head and twittered noisily; once it realized his bright hair wasn’t an eye-catching flower it chirped in annoyance and disappeared with a few quick wingbeats. The nocturnal creatures having retreated to their nests and caves for the day, they were replaced by the medley of apes and avians that had greeted Ging and Kite when they first ventured into the swamplands. The morning sun was soft as it filtered through the blanket of leaves, shafts of golden light illuminating the air and dappling the murky waters below.

In the middle of the swamp a Mount Tabei jutted toward the sky, the main draw to the area for adventurers. The Grand Willows were beautiful on their own, but from the upper reaches of the mountain it was possible to get a sweeping view over the area that fully displayed how they towered over the other trees and bent gracefully downward. Named for the first person to brave the swamplands and reach its peak, Mount Tabei stood at just over twice the height of the Grand Willows: 915 meters or 3,000 feet.

With a day’s journey, they could reach 2,500 feet and take some time to adjust for altitude. With how dramatically vertical the mountain’s physique was, the process would involve scaling rock faces more than it would hiking up slopes. Reaching the base was only an hour’s worth of traversing the unsteady roots of the trees; on occasion a shape would shift in the mud, but always to sink farther down and let out a stream of bubbles. Nothing else bothered them, thankfully, and when they burst out of the underbrush to look up at the base of the mountain Kite took a second to check how badly his leg was still bleeding.

“Is there snow on the mountaintop, Ging?” he asked, pressing his hand against the stained bandage.

“No,” Ging said blithely, looking over his map.

Kite hummed and half-turned to regard the swamp water thoughtfully. If they could start a fire and cycle between boiling and straining the water, they could conceivably wash the bandages. Their supply wasn’t infinite, after all. But Ging obviously wasn’t going to stop here, and lugging a container of swamp water that might not even get used over two thousand feet up a cliff wasn’t an appealing prospect. They’d made do, then. There was sure to be a stream, at least, somewhere on the mountainside.

It took until about eight hundred feet up for blood to start dripping into Kite’s sock. He made a face at the uncomfortable sensation, but since there was currently a hundred foot drop down a near-vertical cliff face below him there wasn’t a heck of a lot he could do about it. He sighed and reached carefully up for the next handhold within reach, squinting through his hair when the wind blew it into his face. Prior, harrowing experience had taught him to invest in study clips that could keep his hat on his head so that he didn’t have to dive for it and almost slip to his damn death. That had been unpleasant, as had been Ging busting out laughing at him for it.

It was probably a good thing that he’d spent most of his young life in a constant state of near-terror, since knowing how to remain functional through it was invaluable in situations like this one. He never achieved quite the same level of focus normally as he did when he was intensely aware that putting too much weight on the wrong section of cliff, for example, would be the end.

He’d like to think that if it came to that, Ging would catch him. But considering that Kite was doing little more than holding Ging back from taking jobs that better fit his skill, and how much emphasis Ging put on self-sufficiency in a Hunter’s life, it wasn’t a guarantee.

Kite kept a very, very careful grip on each handhold as he steadily moved higher.

Eleven hundred feet; the cliff reached its top and flattened into a hill formed from an avalanche of rocks sometime in the past. They weren’t entirely steady, but were certainly more reliable than what they’d just traversed. Ging blazed their trail, clambering up the sides of rocks and hopping between crevices with obvious zeal. Kite tailed him more slowly, both because he was more cautious where he stepped and because said crevices sometimes contained beautifully patterned snakes.

“You really like getting poisoned, huh,” Ging commented dryly, pausing to watch Kite carefully kneel and lean down to get a closer look at a snake with brightly colored, short stripes staggered along its length.

“They’re not poisonous,” Kite corrected absentmindedly. The snake peered up at him and flickered its forked tongue, its sinuous body curling. “Ah, sorry, I won’t disturb you. Good luck finding some mice or birds…”

“Oh, you’ll listen to the snake but not to me?” Ging shook his head, turning and throwing his hands up in the air. “ _Where_ did I go wrong.”

Kite laughed and hopped up on the uneven rock next to him. “You didn’t actually say I should back off of it, though.”

“…” Ging’s eyebrows drew down and his mouth twisted in a tense effort not to pout. “True. This is why Mito chewed me out so bad, I’m no good with kids.”

“I’m not a kid,” Kite protested, more than a little affronted. “I’m twenty. Legally.

“Who’s Mito?”

Ging’s face dropped as though he’d tasted something foul. “Uh, Mito’s my cousin.”

“Why did she chew you out?” Kite asked, curiosity driving him forward even as Ging turned and kept climbing in an obvious effort to avoid questions. “Actually, I don’t really know that much about you, master.”

“Don’t call me that. You know the important stuff,” Ging said, waving his hand dismissively. Kite frowned.

“Family’s important.”

“Well yeah, but I haven’t really spent time with Mito in years. Even then, she mostly followed me around when we were kids playing on the island.”

“Which island?”

“Whale Island, where I grew up.”

Kite made a decisive mental note to look Whale Island up later and see what kind of place it was. It must be amazing, to produce someone like Ging. But Ging didn’t seem particularly eager to discuss it, from how his pace was getting steadily faster.

“Why did she chew you out?” he repeated, warily keeping his voice soft and watching to see if he was pushing too hard.

Ging sighed heavily and turned to face the sweeping vista around them. Grand Willows sang mournfully as the wind made them bow, their wood creaking. Distantly, the chatter of birds taking flight as the veil of leaves they lived in rustled and danced. Clouds of them rose up, taking uncertain forms that changed by the second as one bird snapped at another in hopes of an afternoon snack, a third twisted and pranced through the air in hopes of catching the eye of a prospective mate. Around them, the silence had an eerie weight. Not even the unsettled rocks moved.

“You don’t have to say if you don’t want to,” Kite added quietly.

Again, Ging sighed, shaking his head. “Nah. Last I saw Mito she was pissed because she thought a Hunter’s lifestyle was too rough on a baby.”

“… A baby,” Kite repeated.

“Yeah.”

“You had a… a _baby_ with you?”

“Yup,” Ging said, hopping ten feet up and almost disappearing from sight around the edge of a toppled boulder. “My son.”

“You have a _son??_ ” Kite blurted, nearly loud enough to be yelling. A second later he winced and restrained himself, but when he caught up with Ging the man didn’t seem to care.

“His name’s Gon.”

“Gon…” Kite stared at Ging’s back, disbelief overwhelming any other reaction. He’d probably only said it to try and divert questions, but… Ging wouldn’t call the existence of his son _important information_ for Kite to know?

It wasn’t exactly relevant to his training, Kite supposed. Maybe he’d planned on bringing it up some other time. Once Gon was old enough to travel. Would Kite even still be around by then?

“When was he born?”

“Uh… five years ago, just about. Mito took custody when he was two. Not too long before we ran into each other, actually.”

A wild part of Kite’s imagination wondered recklessly if Ging had been willing to take him on because he was lonely. What Ging even the kind of person who _could_ get lonely? Maybe he’d just wanted to prove he could take decent care of someone.

Kite pulled the brim of his hat down self-consciously and pushed away that train of thought. “So she took custody because she thought his being with you would be too dangerous?”

“Right. She gave me a hell of a long lecture about it, too. Ugh, just remembering it makes me want to escape to the other side of the planet.”

The aggravation in his tone dissuaded Kite from asking anything else in that vein. Neither of them said anything for a few minutes, just clambering over the field of loose stone.

“What was Gon like?” Kite ventured, curiosity getting the best of his better judgement.

Ging glanced out at the landscape again, a pleased smile growing on his face. “He’s a great kid. Even before he could talk he was always blabbering, really inquisitive about everything. Had to put everything within reach in his mouth. That nearly ended bad a couple of times, so Mito probably had a point, but…”

He trailed off, but the distant expression of fondness on his face spoke volumes. Kite looked away, feeling strangely that he was intruding on something private. Even hearing it from the man himself, it was difficult to imagine Ging holding a baby, let alone feeding it and changing its diapers. After so much time spent under the impression that Ging just didn’t like being physically close to people, it was jarring to be presented with the idea that at one point he’d had to have. Well. The term one of the books he’d stolen had used was ‘taken a lover’. The more common phrasing was ‘fucked someone’.

The vulgarity didn’t mesh well with the atmosphere and Kite dismissed that train of thought entirely. If talking about losing Gon was uncomfortable for Ging, the subject of his partner would definitely be too much. Kite was already treading carefully, loath to press too far. He certainly wouldn’t have enjoyed discussing Owl’s disappearance one night, leaving him around five years old with only dogs for company. She had been quite elderly, though; years after, he contemplated that she probably left so that he wouldn’t wake to find her corpse. Considerate, really.

But these thoughts were all ghosts already covered in cobwebs. No point in being dramatic about it. And Ging, patting the head of a friendly passing mountain goat, still had a wistful look on his face.

“I’m sorry,” Kite said softly. Ging glanced back and raised his eyebrows.

“For what?”

“That you were separated.”

“Oh, it’s okay.” Ging shrugged. “I pretty much agreed with the court ruling. It would maybe have been nice to keep him around, but the whole legal battle would have taken so long that it wasn't worth it."

"... Are you..." Kite ventured, only continuing when Ging glanced back at him. "Are you sure that was the right thing to do?"

Ging looked baffled. "What?"

"W-well," Kite muttered, tugging the brim of his hat down slightly. Old ghosts, old ghosts. "Leaving Gon there. Without you."

"Why do you think it wasn't right?"

Kite nervously examined Ging's expression for hints of anger, but there was only curiosity. It seemed to just be a straightforward question. "I mean- I don't know if it wasn't right, but. You could have stayed, couldn't you? Put your work on hold. The problem was that Gon was in danger while traveling with you, not that he was with you specifically."

"Well, Mito'd probably have chewed me out no matter what," Ging muttered, annoyance flashing across his face. "And she likes kids more than me, she'll do a good job. But I guess that's true."

"Why didn't you?"

Ging shrugged, turning to face the road. "I didn't want to."

The simplicity of the answer made Kite stumble and lose his stride for a second. There was no arguing with that, he supposed. Still, he stared at Ging's back in amazement. How did someone come to think that way? To leave your own child behind, not out of bitterness or resentment, but just out of the pure non-desire to be responsible for them. Babies were abandoned all the time, sure- Kite had known that since the first moment he could remember. But Ging had spoken about Gon so happily, with so much pride; how could he so blithely say he favored his work?

It must be incredible, Kite thought, watching Ging speed forward, to live a life where no one could force you to do things you didn't want to. Where you'd never had to degrade yourself to survive. To live by your own rules, never compromising or bowing to someone else's. Ging genuinely didn't care if it had been right. He just decided what he wanted most and took it, cutting loose any dead weight that would slow him down. Maybe he had to make sacrifices, but he never regretted an action he'd committed to. And he never gave any of his time to things that weren't worth it.

He’d known it, on some level, but it was another thing to see it so callously applied.

The thought bit at his heels as he strived to keep pace.

 

 

 


	4. Two Birds with One Stone

The pike that Kite had used to defend himself in Ecinev had been shoddily made at best. He’d just tied an oversized spike to the end of a stick and worked with it until he could spin it around fast enough to look intimidating. It could, and had, cause serious harm to someone if they were on the receiving side of the pointy edge, but a well-aimed blow to the rope would have made it crumble.

All the same, since he had used it for so many years and could easily recall how its weight felt in his hands, how the cold metal had sounded cutting through the air, it made sense to model another weapon off of it. Not exactly the same—studier, to be sure. But he had a head start on developing a summon in that shape, and the empty spaces on Crazy Slots’ reel were nagging at him. The main issue was figuring out what specific kind of weapon he’d be aiming for.

“What, you’re not just going to do another pike?” was Ging’s helpful first contribution.

“I could,” Kite said, rubbing his eye blearily with one hand and fighting back a yawn. The moon was just setting on the horizon, the sky lighting up pink as the sun showed its face. The light was only just touching the topmost parapets of the dilapidated castle Ging was methodically searching through. “But since I already have a bladed weapon, I was thinking I should do something else first.”

“Eh. If you really want to have a diverse set of choices—I guess it’s not really a choice, a diverse set of possible weapons—then sure. But if you’re more comfortable with blades, there’s no reason to put yourself at a disadvantage. Any more than the nature of your ability already does, anyway.”

He flashed a grin in Kite’s direction. Kite snorted and ignored him, watching the rays of sunlight illuminate every speck of dust in the abandoned entryway. Ging had busied himself trying to figure out the proper combination of stones to tap on the wall to open the secret passage that he’d been ranting about for the past two hours. It supposedly would lead down to the royal crypt, where each lord and lady of high blood would have been buried alongside their most treasured possessions. An archaeologist’s dream, to be sure.

“I’d prefer to have more kinds of weapons than just pointy metal sticks,” Kite said dryly. “But the pike wasn’t a bad weapon, really. My main concern is finding another weapon that has a similar shape, so I can practice with it. It was fairly heavily unbalanced, since the spike stuck out to one side, and the memory of that is bound to interfere with my mental image of what I’m conjuring. Do you know of any weapons that have a sharp turn like that?”

Ging grunted noncommittally, his face tense with concentration. The order with which he tapped the stones subtly changed the resonance his taps had, as though on the other side of the wall locks were clicking open in sequence and sliding shut again when the incorrect spot was touched. “This is ridiculous,” he grumbled, but Kite could feel assured not taking his annoyance seriously since his eyes were blazing with determined curiosity. It had taken a while to be able to differentiate Ging’s moods from each other, since a layer of grumpy nonchalance lay across them all. But by this point it was plain to see when he was alight with encouraging passion, all wrapped up in the subject he was devoting his full attention to so that Kite could let his grumbling pass without comment.

A low rumble following Ging’s final tap against the wall preceded its withdrawing into the floor, the stone bricks grinding across one another with a terrible sound. The seam of the secret door had been perfectly fashioned to be invisible under any inspection but the absolute closest, which served its purpose well but meant that the opening of the door sent a cloud of dust, crumbling mortar, and shards of rock tumbling to the ground.

Ging threw his hands up in the air and whooped, turning on his heel to high-five Kite’s anticipatory upraised hand. “Nice!! Let’s get down there!”

Making a resignedly fond mental note of where his rather one-sided attempt at conversation had been left, Kite passed off the oil lamp and scooped up their packs when Ging immediately dove through the hole in the wall and went pelting down the stairway there. How he could have such confidence in his footing on stairs that were literally falling apart was beyond Kite, who worked his way down more carefully but quickly enough that he was still in range of the lamp light.

“Oh, look at this, look at this—” Ging gushed as they reached the sepulcher, holding up the lamp to illuminate the room. “This fresco has to be over four centuries old but it’s still so well preserved, looks like they used the  _ secco _ technique, and it helps that there’s no sunlight down here to fade the colors… The ceiling has paintings too, right? Ugh, this lamp isn’t nearly bright enough, but I think I can make out a depiction of the royal family of, hmm… looks like Bähr IV. You remember him?”

“Called ‘der Brecher’ for his harsh punishments of those who didn’t meet his expectations. Took his title from his uncle Alarik, who was holding it until he came of age. Succeeded by his daughter Marelda, who negotiated peace to end the civil war her father’s brutal policies inspired.” Kite answered smoothly, flipping open his notebook and checking to make sure his pencil was sharpened. On rare occasions an employer would cast doubt on Ging’s ability to photographically remember everything about his discoveries, and having notes to show that little to nothing changed between his first assessment and his final one was useful in such cases. It was almost unfair how good at his job Ging was.

“Not bad,” Ging conceded, his attention already captured by the first tomb on their left. “This carving looks like Warda Dittmar’s work, not surprising, she was pretty famous in this time period…”

As he rambled on Kite catalogued his thoughts in rapid shorthand, a talent he’d developed from necessity and which hadn’t helped make his handwriting any less atrocious. So long as it was this side of legible there wasn’t a problem, but more than once Ging had laughingly compared it to the enigmatic characters of ancient, forgotten languages.

Two hours in, just as his hand was starting to cramp, Ging suddenly stopped in front of a magnificent statue seated in an indentation in the wall and turned to face him. Kite straightened up at the look of realization on his face, still caught up in thinking about the reign of Maria Fromm who had successfully defeated a neighboring kingdom and whose deeds were immortalized in a delicate carving on the side of her tomb. Ging pointed wordlessly at the statue, grinning from ear to ear.

The non sequitur clicked for Kite when he registered that the statue depicted the period’s anthropomorphized specter of death, a figure swathed in heavy robes so that all but their hands was hidden. One hand was flesh, its palm facing up and its fingers wrapped around a golden hourglass. The other was skeletal and clutched the handle of a long, silver scythe.

“A  _ scythe? _ ” he asked incredulously. “Scythes aren’t weapons, they’re for harvesting crops.”

“And railroad spikes are for holding down railroad tracks, but you made that work well enough.” Ging propped his hands up on his hips, radiating satisfied smugness. “If it’s something bladed that has an abrupt angle at the end, look no further.”

“How would fighting with a scythe even work? The sharp edge is facing inward, in order for the blade itself to have the lateral range it would need to efficiently execute an attack it would need to be extraordinarily heavy, it isn’t exactly a nimble object—”

Kite closed his mouth so that his teeth clicked together as Ging blew a raspberry that echoed off the chamber walls.

“Okay, but consider this,” Ging said, pivoting so that he could hold up his hands toward the impressive statue. “Scythes are cool.”

A counterweight on the opposite side, Kite thought, carefully keeping a hold on the feeling of consolidating his  _ Nen _ into a specific shape; a counterweight to offset the heavy blade, and to offer a grip when he needed it. Crazy Slots would be at the opposite end, with the metal staff attaching where its feet usually were. Where the blade met the handle, a handhold that served the dual purpose of facilitating attacks and preventing him from cutting off his own fingers.

Kite exasperatedly resolved to make his next weapon something simple that wasn’t a double-edged sword. Something with blunt force, maybe, since he had two blades already.

And once he was done with this weapon, he would be thoroughly over and done with trying to avoid difficult summons. He’d already lugged around a scythe for a month, so anything else would be a walk in the park in comparison.

“Silent Waltz,” Crazy Slots informed him in a grandiose announcement, its face more static than usual because of how the handle extending from below its mouth contained it.

“What does that have to do with anything?” Kite asked. “You should at least come up with names that make sense.”

“First of all,  _ you _ should at least listen before you throw judgements around! Second, sometimes the only reason you need to do something is because it’s cool.” Its voice turned snide. “That’s why you went with a scythe at all, right?”

Kite scowled at it. Every conversation he had with Crazy Slots made it harder to believe that the thing was really formed from his own will. The clown had come into the world like it willed itself there. “I went with a scythe because it has a similar weight distribution as my pike did. It wasn’t just because it’s cool, that didn’t factor into my decision at all.”

“Sure,” Crazy Slots drawled, drawing out the vowel sarcastically. “I totally believe that. Anyway, Silent Waltz is a cool name and it also—here’s my reasoning, which I would have given without this whole argument if you weren’t so fucking rude—is referencing the three things that rule over every creature on this planet!!”

Air rattled through its mechanisms in an approximation of a proud huff. Kite stared at it blankly.

“That damn statue, remember?? The specter of Death!!”

“… Oh,” Kite said, furrowing his brow as he sifted through his recollections from the castle’s secret crypt. There had been something related to threes that Ging had talked about when he examined the statue in earnest.

“This version of Death is actually also kind of an anthropomorphic reminder of time’s power over life,” he’d said, tracing his fingers through the air just above the swirling stone. “People had a healthy faith in the power of life, and birth and the like, but when the wars broke out this Death became more popular because of how it portrays Death waiting to take his—its, really—due. Violence was suddenly a much more prevalent part of people’s lives, and the hourglass and scythe really dive home how death is patient and inevitable. Creepy.”

In the current moment, Kite hummed thoughtfully and turned Crazy Slots’ words over in his head. “The three ruling things being life, time, and death, then?”

“Ding ding ding!” Crazy Slots sang. “The silent, inescapable phantasm of Death, waiting to gracefully step in and bring doom to the foe.”

“I don’t know how you got to be so melodramatic,” Kite said. Crazy Slots squawked in outrage.

\--

They traveled to the mountainous city of Asculum at a leisurely pace. More leisurely than Kite had thought Ging was capable of, in fact. Three years had been taken up hopping from place to place, job to job, with hardly a moment to breathe between adventures before Ging went haring off again after the rumor of an underground city, an ancient scroll that would unlock the key to deciphering a dead language, a treasure trove of artefacts buried deep in desert sand. The man was absolutely insatiable when it came to adventure. But all of the sudden Ging’s pace slowed to a crawl and he tarried and wandered aimlessly on roundabout paths. Kite wasn’t complaining, of course. It was nice to have a few days where there was nothing to do. Relatively speaking, of course—he still had to keep up with his training. But he was used to it by now; it was a rare occasion that one of Ging’s surprise sucker punches that opened up a spar managed to land. Kite had a much smaller number of bruises at any given time as a result, and their slowed pace allowed said bruises to heal decently.

When he asked Ging why he hadn’t taken on, or even looked for, any jobs recently Ging had waved away the question. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “There’s someone I want to meet up with in a week or so, and taking a job would get in the way.”

“Who is it?” Kite asked with no small confusion. Ging got on well with people who shared his interests and helped them on digs, but they rarely met again unless by chance. And Ging had never reached out to set up a meeting unprompted before.

“You’ll see,” Ging said, tugging Kite’s hat down over his eyes. Kite huffed and smacked his hand away.

“Fine. Be mysterious.”

But as teasingly as Ging rebuffed his questions, there could be no question that something about the upcoming meeting was distracting him. And he knew it was apparent, judging by how he made up for his reticence with continual spontaneous shows of affection. Bewilderedly enjoying the third vigorous attempt to make a bird’s nest of his hair in as many hours, Kite couldn’t help but feel a certain trepidation. Something had changed, and he couldn’t predict anything anymore. As someone who had survived fifteen years by managing to accurately predict everything that would try to kill him, it was an intensely uncomfortable sensation that undermined the relaxed nature of what seemed to be actually going on.

Once they set foot in Asculum, the looming hammer blow fell.

“Kite,” Ging said, and Kite immediately knew that his suspicions that something was wrong were correct. Ging had never sounded so serious, even in the moments where he’d been angry at one of Kite’s worse mistakes. Ging sat cross-legged on the park bench next to Kite, his fingers laced together and his eyes trained on them. In the background, children shrieked and people cheered, running around the grassy space or lying on spread-out blankets to tan. The atmosphere clashed dissonantly with the anticipatory dread Kite felt hanging over him. “I’m sure by now you’ve picked up that I have a… certain reputation among Hunters.”

“Of course,” Kite said warily, furrowing his brow in a mix of confusion and concern. “You’ve done amazing things. Few of them can say the same.”

“That’s a matter of perspective,” Ging said, but it was just an offhand comment and not a true rebuttal. “So a lot of people know about me. And. A number of them want to know me better.”

For a wild moment Kite wondered if Ging was about to tell him he’d gotten engaged or something. He couldn’t have been in a relationship without Kite knowing about it, could he? Considering Ging, it was possible. There wasn’t really anything Kite would put past him.

Ging huffed a heavy breath and turned his face away, perhaps frustrated with his own choice of words. “What I’m saying is that you’re not the only person who wants to be my student.”

Kite’s speculations ground to an abrupt halt and he blinked. “That makes sense. So… are you going to take on another one?”

The last word had only just fallen from his lips when Ging looked at him and Kite’s blood ran cold. “Master…?”

“I’ve no intention of having more than one student,” Ging said.

“Oh.

“Then,” Kite said, and though it was impossible for his heart to sink any further it tried to at the wavering note in his own voice, “Then what are you going to…?”

“… There’s a couple of people who stand out. They’ve got stars on their license, or they were particularly persistent, or especially persuasive. You get the gist.”

“Right.” Kite’s hands tightened into fists, but that didn’t stop them trembling.

“I figure that since I gave you a shot, it’s only right to give them a shot too.”

“… Right,” Kite repeated, his throat tightening so that his voice dropped to a half-whisper.

“… That said.” Ging’s gaze stayed level and his voice, even. “I’ve no intention of just ditching you, either.”

For a moment Kite’s heart stopped beating, then resumed its now steadily declining pace. He felt his shoulders drop as the physical tension he’d only been half-aware of melted away. “Oh. I. Thank you.”

Ging nodded slightly in acknowledgement, his face unchanging. “The decision I’ve come to is that you both deserve the chance to defend your ambitions—you and them. And I have to ensure that whoever comes with me is strong enough to fend for themselves. For you, I know that’s the case. But I don’t have a firsthand demonstration of their skills.”

The little flicker of pride that had lived briefly in Kite’s chest was smothered by the sudden weight of comprehension. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Ging’s expression finally shifted subtly, from perfect neutrality to the shadow of sympathy.

“You want me to fight them,” Kite said numbly.

“For you to fight each other.” Ging laced his fingers together loosely. “To the winner go the spoils, as they say.”

“And to stay with you, those are the spoils.”

“Yes.”

Kite closed his eyes briefly. Fighting people was inevitable. They had fought bandits, or murderers, or poachers before, and that hadn’t been much worse than fighting animals. Animals were only acting according to their natural instincts; the people he had incapacitated had chosen to commit their crimes. They were other humans, but they didn’t warrant any more sympathy than the nameless, faceless mob members in Ecinev who now bore scars in the sharp curve of dogs’ fangs. But those were criminals, unrepentant ones, who refused any offer of a friendly hand. And Ging had been backing him up then, Ging had always been the one to strike the final blow when it had to be struck.

Over the years the habit had alternately surged up and been broken, more thoroughly each time, but Kite still flinched ever so slightly at the sight of human blood, the sound of human screams.

“What happens to the loser?” he asked quietly. He didn’t want to know. But it would be worse to find out later.

Ging’s face hardened again, and Kite knew the answer before he spoke. Before the question had even been asked.

“Surrender or death.”

\--

The first was a man a quarter foot taller than Ging, windswept hawk-feather brown hair, similarly colored eyes. His wide, steeled jaw shifted tensely when he laid eyes on Kite, who regarded him silently. He was muscularly built, obviously powerful, and he made no effort to hide the twin daggers strapped across his back. Their handles jutted out above his shoulders, curved twins with well cared-for leather grips. They stood out starkly from the rest of his rather plain outfit, which would have looked more fitting on someone intending to go jogging. Casting a glance over the man’s sweatpants, Kite thought vaguely that they would be difficult to move around in once soaked with water; an observation relevant only because the sky overhead was heavy with deep grey clouds.

“Turner Firmamentum?” Ging asked, extending a hand. His voice was overly loud in the tense silence, aggressively ignorant of the stare burning between his prospective student and his current one.

“Yes,” the man, Turner, said, taking Ging’s hand and shaking it courteously. “It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Freecss.”

Ging’s eyebrows raised and he sighed. “Wow. Kite here tried that formality shit on me too, when we met. Just cut it out right now and save trouble later on.”

Later on, Kite echoed in his head. It was jarringly nauseating to stand in front of the person he was about to duel, ostensibly to the death, and act like they were having a pleasant introduction. From the way Turner’s jugular was jumping in his throat, he felt similarly. To his credit, though, he managed to turn his lips up in an approximation of a smile. “Of course. Ging, then. And you’re Kite?”

He finally faced Kite directly, his attempt at joviality vanishing. Kite blinked slowly up at him. Turner almost looked ready to whip out his blades there and then. “Yes. I’m Kite. Nice to meet you.”

“… Yeah,” Turner grunted. Turning back to Ging, he gestured at the rocky expanse around them. “This good?”

The plateau, one of few in the variably inclined landscape, was littered with rocks of all sizes that had, from their placements, come rolling down the hillside to rest at the base. It was nearly a mile from the highway that Ging had pulled off of to reach the spot, in a dip so that a rock wall would hide them from the road’s view. Everywhere else, only clay and stone would witness them. There was plenty of room to maneuver, though once the sky opened the loose clay would quickly become slick mud.

“Looks as good a place as any to me,” Ging said, his hands on his hips as he spun in a slow circle. “Kite?”

“It’s fine,” Kite agreed.

“Good!” Ging clapped his hands together. “Say, Turner, did you bring a car out here?”

“No, I walked.”

“Oh? It’s quite a distance from here to the town.”

Turner smiled genuinely, though still stiffly. “I like hiking. And I’m glad I was able to find a proper spot for… this.”

“Ah, it makes sense for a Gem Hunter to like the mountainside. Know of any impressive jewels in this region?”

“A few.” Turner ran his tongue over his lips and didn’t continue until Ging raised his eyebrows. “There’s a mine a few miles west of the town that has a series of veins of Poitinicite. That’s why I’m here, actually. I… appreciate your traveling here, but I would have come to you if it was more convenient.”

“Oh, no, I’m not on any jobs right now, and this country is quite beautiful. And I wanted to see about these mines.” Ging’s eyes focused on Turner, brightening, and a small grin tugged at his lips. “You were the one to discover Poitinicite, weren’t you? That’s what got you your second star.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Impressive. I’m fairly certain that the mines will be visible, at least in the distance, from the road out of town I’ll be taking. I’m not on the job now, but there’s a cave I’ve got my eye on in the next state over…”

He kept talking, but Kite tuned him out. Turner’s eyes slid over to him again and plain as day Kite could tell that he was lingering on the same phrase Kite was. That, like Kite, he was stewing in his furious determination to be the one taking the road out of town with Ging.

Why they had to go through this charade was beyond Kite. Turner looked pleased to be having a conversation with Ging—understandably, since he’d been striving for Ging’s attention for years—but grew more visibly agitated by the minute.

Kite didn’t want to begin, but waiting with the ghost of an axe over his head was making him want to scream.

“… Well,” Ging said finally, glancing around. “I suppose I’ll wait up top, near the car. If you’re both ready…?”

Turner nodded, little more than a jerk forward of his head, his face pale and drawn. For a long moment Kite didn’t move. On some level, perhaps, he had thought it was all an elaborate act. Still, he couldn’t quite process the questioning lilt in Ging’s tone. Since he had been told of what Ging had decided was the best course of action, he hadn’t felt fully right in his skin, in his thoughts. It wasn’t possible to think of the person who had taken him off the streets, given him food, given him clothes and a place to sleep, given him a future, and believe that the same Ging was now telling him to kill someone.

He didn’t have to do it, he thought with a strange, detached desperation. He could surrender now, before the fight even began. He could surrender if it seemed that he couldn’t win. Would it be held against him that he wanted to live? Was it shameful, cowardly, weak to feel that he would prefer anything in the world to the slow, painful drain of death? If he surrendered, then he would have to be on his own again. That was the choice; not between surrender, death, or victory but simply between dying, living on his own, or living by Ging’s side with blood on his hands.

Ging regarded him, waiting for his answer. Kite couldn’t bring himself to try and read Ging’s face. He had been happy, happier than he could remember feeling in his life, in the past three years. As the prospect of going back to what he’d had before, scraps and rags and silence but for shouted threats, stared him in the face he knew with a despairing certainty that as much as he feared the looming threat death, it would be worse to live that way again.

“I’m ready,” he said quietly.

“Okay,” Ging said. “I’ll be up there, then.”

He turned and strode over to the tall, steep wall of rocks that hid their dueling grounds from the road. A brief kneel, a leap, and he stood at the top. He sat so that his feet dangled over the edge, his elbows resting on his knees. He was just far enough away that Kite couldn’t make out his face.

Turner cleared his throat and Kite blinked, looking over at him. The veneer of cordiality he’d shown to Ging, as thin as it had been, was gone. Now, he glared openly and Kite could feel the biting edges of his bloodlust seeping through the air.

“I won’t go easy on you,” he said flatly.

“I don’t expect you to.” A sudden surge of words forced their way out of his mouth, though he already knew what they would be met with. “If you want to surrender—at any point—I won’t keep going, I’m perfectly willing to be merciful—”

“Oh?” Turner’s face darkened with anger and his tone, already aggressive, sharpened. “Your victory isn’t so assured as all that. I’ve been proving I’m worthy of the position you’re in for years, and I’m not going to back down just because you ask me to.”

He held out his hand, a polite gesture turned challenging. “My dreams are worth more than that.”

Kite looked down at his hand and watched his own move to shake it. His own voice sounded wrong in his ears. “To the victor go the spoils, then.”

Turner’s hand clenched around Kite’s in a perfunctory handshake. Each looked the other with matching stony expressions. Wordlessly they let go, turned, and paced away ten steps.

Kite heard the crunch of dirt behind him as his tenth step hit the ground and he dove left, dodging the blow aimed at his back. Turner pivoted and smoothly slashed at him again. In each hand he held a long, wickedly pointed dagger. A cursory glance was enough to assure Kite that they were Ben’s knives—no other smith could produce a dagger functional enough for a Hunter to use that had that much empty space worked into its design. The indentations on each side of the blade would dig into a wound from the inside and tear it open farther; whether it would also poison the target he couldn’t tell and wasn’t in a hurry to find out.

Turner was fast—the speed at which he’d turned and attacked from twenty paces away was testament to that. But so long as Kite kept moving and anticipated the movement of each of his hands, he wasn’t fast enough. He could keep Kite on the defensive, but that was all. The consistency of his attacks, however, the practiced ease with which he moved from one slash to the next, hardly left any room for counterattacks.

One mistake, Kite thought in the tiny portion of his mind not focused on predicting Turner’s movements, one mistake was all either of them needed. A single opening would be enough to end it.

At the moment Turner had the advantage, but he also had a brutal style that required him to put his full weight behind his attacks. As a result, there was a tiny window of opportunity to push him back after each strike that would at least give Kite the breathing room to summon Crazy Slots. Unfortunate for Turner, that Kite was already so practiced at identifying the exact movement that would buy him time. Ging was much, much more difficult to read.

Kite ducked under a slash that very nearly hit his ponytail and spun, slamming his foot just under Turner’s shoulder in a back kick and using the leverage his bent knees gave him to shove the man back. Turner grunted as the air was forced out of his lungs and he flew up rather than stumbling across the ground; the double impact of the kick and his return to earth left him disoriented for just a second or two longer.

Plenty of time for Kite to slow his breathing and concentrate, recalling ceramic and metal, and reach out—

A puff of smoke beneath his downturned palm signaled Crazy Slots’ arrival. The clown cackled and floated beneath his fingers, its reel shivering in anticipation. “Drawing your weapon so soon!! What, are you in a pinch?”

“Shut up and roll,” Kite told it flatly, keeping his eyes trained on Turner as Crazy Slots snorted and trilled. There was only one number; he’d end up with Prima Cadenza. But the sword would give him some breathing room, and he’d be able to inflict damage with something that wasn’t his bare hands. That was always a plus.

Turner watched him back, his breathing still ragged and his eyes narrow with suspicion. He kept his distance rather than plunging forward to prevent Crazy Slots from rolling, likely wary of its unknown effects. Wise, but in this case unnecessary. One of Crazy Slots’ weaknesses was that it could be destroyed before it landed on a weapon.

Considering how much Kite was focusing on not letting Turner’s daggers touch him, however, he didn’t have any room to talk. Crazy Slots dinged and warped; he caught it deftly and stepped forward into his fighting stance. Turner examined the saber warily, bringing his daggers to bear again.

A short pause. The wind wailed and danced around the rocky outcroppings surrounding them.

There was only a fraction of a second between when they acted. The distance between them shrank to nothing as Kite lunged forward, his stab parried and returned so that he had to shift back a step or take a dagger to the ribcage. Turner attempted to follow up with a double-handed slash at chest level, but Kite blocked both blades and pivoted so that he and Turner were back-to-back for a moment. It didn’t last as he took another step and struck out at Turner’s unprotected side, only scoring a shallow scratch as Turner dove out of the way and rolled to his feet.

When Kite lifted Prima Cadenza’s point to eye level again, reassuming his stance, a smear of blood stained its edge. His stomach twisted and, just barely, his focus faltered.

Immediately, he had to twist out of the way of a strike aimed to take off his right arm. The dagger sliced across the skin on the inside of his arm in a hot line of pain and Kite swore internally, springing out of the way of the follow-up stab to his chest. The cut wasn’t deep; it wouldn’t hinder his movement if he could ignore the pain, which he had to. It bled steadily, but watching it out of the corner of his eye Kite didn’t see any instantaneous corrosion or unnatural discoloration. He didn’t feel dizzy or ill, either, so luckily enough it seemed that at least one of the daggers wasn’t poisoned.

He caught his breath and coldly told himself to harden his heart. Turner obviously wasn’t playing around, and he was fortunate to have escaped the moment of hesitation alive. Blood dripped down his arm as his heart raced, pumping with adrenaline. He had been here before. He could do this again. He had to do it again. As it always had, his life depended on it.

In the onslaught of blows that followed, he cleared his mind of all thought but what would help him find victory. Steadily, the cuts across Turner’s body grew deeper and more numerous. Steadily, Kite forced him to defend himself. A twist of Kite’s wrist forced one of the daggers out of Turner’s hand and it spiraled through the air, hitting the ground with an ungraceful thud some yards away. Turner’s face twisted in frustration, but he didn’t flinch and managed to fully block Kite’s next strike to his neck. The movement left Kite half turned away from Turner, who spun his dagger around in his hand and struck out to hit—

Empty air. Turner stiffened and breathed in sharply as Kite flipped over his head, his left hand balanced on Turner’s forearm so that the sudden presence of Kite’s weight, as skinny as he was, unbalanced him and he toppled forward. The tip of Turner’s dagger was plunged through the cloth of Kite’s hat, which had fallen off of his head when he had been briefly upside-down. Kite felt a twinge of annoyance at the sight, but it was drowned out by the sudden roar of his own heart. His feet landed on Turner’s shoulder and back; his left hand dragged upwards in the perfect position to grip Turner’s head and force it back, exposing his throat. Prima Cadenza was already pressed against his jugular, intimately enough that there was a slight indentation where it rested on Turner’s skin. It would only take a tiny movement of Kite’s wrist for the fatal blow to be struck.

The saber left only a shallow nick. Kite kicked off of Turner’s back, sending him sprawling across the ground, and gained some distance with a series of one-handed cartwheels.

“There,” he said shortly once he’d gotten enough of a hold on himself that he was sure his tone wouldn’t betray his agitation. “It’s done.”

Turner shifted on the ground, pushing up onto his hands and knees. Inch by inch, his hand crept up until it was pressed against the cut seeping blood on his neck. Kite couldn’t see his face, but his shoulders were trembling minutely. The tremor worsened when he pulled away his hand and stared down at his red-stained fingers.

“Are you  _ insulting _ me?” he breathed.

Kite stiffened at the simmering rage in Turner’s voice and his foot slid involuntarily sideways—a widening of his stance that would make it easier to break into a sprint. Turner’s hand clenched into a fist and he twisted around, his face purpling with fury and his teeth bared in a snarl. Beneath his outward composure and determination, the part of Kite that kept its head down quailed.

“Do you look down on me that much??” Turner demanded in a ragged shout, the force of his anger undiluted by the momentary anguish that tore its way across his face.

A singular drop of blood off of Prima Cadenza’s tip hit the ground. Kite stood stock-still, staring wide-eyed at the explosive reaction his mercy had garnered. “You dueled me for my place as Ging’s student,” he said finally. “You lost. There’s no need to kill you, so I won’t.”

He may have imagined it, but for a moment Kite swore that he could hear Ging let out a slow, heavy breath.

“No  _ need _ ?” Turner repeated, clambering to his feet without taking his livid glare off Kite. He was still shaking, a full-body quiver that made the dagger in his hand clatter. Kite couldn’t help but flinch back in horror as Turner clawed at the wound on his own neck, intentionally worsening it so that blood ran freely down his collarbone, soaking into his shirt. “I said from the beginning that I would win or die, and you think  _ this _ is enough to stop me? This is  _ nothing _ .”

If Turner intended the display as a psychological attack, it was working. Just watching him shake and harm himself in the throes some violent need to prove he could take it was enough to start Kite trembling in turn. “S-stop it! I’ve already won, so you might as well admit defeat! There’s no need for this fight to go on any longer than it already has!”

Kite’s fingers tightened around Prima Cadenza’s grip as Turner let out a single derisive huff of laughter, his face suddenly smoothing out. He met Kite’s stare with eyes as hard as steel and as bright with pride as the morning sun. “Do you think that everything I did to get here was a joke? I’ll never surrender. If you deserve to stay by Ging’s side at all, you won’t either. If you don’t want to kill me…”

Turner raised his dagger. Kite, aghast, felt his body move according to the lessons that had been drilled into him and bring Prima Cadenza to bear.

“… then  _ die _ .”

It had begun raining by the time that they had finished. Puddles of mud were spreading, making the earth shift slickly beneath Kite's feet as he paced forward.

"Satisfied?" he asked. "You can't even move anymore."

Turner made no reply, sitting still with his back against the rock Kite had thrown him into. His head was hanging down limply and his daggers had fallen out of his fingers, steadily sinking below the murky water. The blood seeping steadily from his wounds turned the puddles around him pink.

"... Not conscious, either," Kite muttered. He dispersed Prima Cadenza with some relief. It had been worrying to think that the day would end with one of them dead, but given that Turner was well and truly defeated he felt the weight on his shoulders lighten. The battle had hardly been easy, but he took some small pride in his victory. Blood dripped from a cut on his left cheek, as well as from a few on his arms, and his hair was getting wet enough that it stuck to his face and weighed down his head. His hairband had snapped at one point, so of course it had all ended up in a wreckage of a bird's nest; he wasn't much looking forward to disentangling it. Kite pivoted to look up at the ledge Ging was watching from.

"Sir," he called, "let's all go get out of the r-"

His throat closed off noiselessly as all the weight of the world slammed down on his shoulders, a viscously tangible aura that shoved him back into every stray instinct to flee he'd ever had. But then it had been easy- he'd just had to make himself smaller, make sure he was silent enough to evade notice, make himself wait for the danger to pass by so he could sneak away. Now he had to force himself not to vanish with Zetsu, knowing that where it had saved him then it would only leave him defenseless now. He couldn't imagine what this abyssal pressure would feel like without the meager protection his own aura afforded. He couldn't move a muscle.

"Go?" Ging repeated; Kite couldn't help but shrink, recognizing fury even in this cold form he wasn't sure how to handle. "Why would we? It's not over."

Kite shakily glanced back to where Turner sat, still unconscious, still bleeding freely. Even without looking at Ging he could feel the press of his stony expression. "I- we need bandages, he's going to..." There was a subtle shift in Ging's aura and Kite's gaze snapped back to see him push off the rock wall, landing at its base with his cloak flaring out above him. "... he's going to bleed out..." he said past the tension closing his throat off, losing volume with every word, having to fight for every syllable when all of his senses, all of his thought processes were focused on watching Ging steadily approach him.

Miniature waves rippled across the surface of the miniature lakes on the ground, the water trembling with the force of the aura rending the air, and the rain leapt away from Ging's untouchable form. Kite had to plant his feet in the uncertain mud to stay where he was as the overwhelming need to run gnawed at him. With each step that hit the ground he made himself breathe, made himself remember that he couldn't run, he couldn't run, if he ran he wouldn't be able to stop, and that would be the same as losing which was the same as dying and he wouldn't be able to face Ging again, he couldn't run, he  _ mustn't _ run.

Ging stopped at arm's reach from him and as his hand slowly came up Kite tracked it with his eyes. The adrenaline still coursing through his veins would have made it easy to dodge, or at least to roll with the force. But he didn't move. He kept himself in place with all the force of his desperate thoughts, a thrill of terrified hilarity giggling  _ Take your lumps _ in the back of his mind. 

The only surprise he felt was that the sound that cut through the air wasn't the thump of a punch but the crack of an open-handed slap. A second later he felt the pain, sharper where Ging's hand had connected with the cut on his face and smeared his own blood across his cheek.

Kite stared at the ground, holding perfectly still. It was strangely demeaning to be slapped. More than when Ging had hit him in training before, when his guard wasn't perfect, or when he'd looked away from the plant creature's death. Disappointment rather than simply punishment. In his periphery vision he saw the hem of Ging's cloak settling as he lowered his arm again but knew better than to think that meant Ging wouldn't hit him again if he didn't make the right choices.

"Do you think he'll accept that?" Ging asked him. Kite winced at the disgust in his voice. "That he'll be happy to wake and realize you took pity on him? What is the first rule?"

"A Hunter must always be on the Hunt," Kite answered mechanically.

"In this world, the Hunt ends in only two ways- victory or death." Ging's left hand lifted, cutting across Kite's field of vision to point at Turner's prone form. "Are you saying he isn't truly a Hunter?"

"No!!" Kite protested vehemently, hunching further just at the thought of having failed to measure up and of how Turner hadn't been wrong. "But- but I won, he can't fight anymore, so there's no need..."

"Oh, so that's what you're thinking," Ging said coldly. "That you could beat him into submission like you do to animals and let him slink away afterwards with his tail between his legs."

Kite opened his mouth to protest but closed it with a click of his teeth as he found he couldn't deny it. "I thought," he muttered, "if he just gave up, then... It would be better..."

"For who? For him?" Ging narrowed his eyes and pressed his left index finger to Kite's chest. "To live knowing that he wasn't even worth killing?"

"No, but if- if no one has to die, then—" Kite looked up again, searching Ging's face desperately. "He could just find something else to hunt for, couldn't he?? If he’s still alive, then there’s always something else—"

In his periphery vision he saw the fingers of Ging's right hand flex and stiffened, dropping his gaze again. "I don't understand," he choked out, barely above a whisper. "I just can't understand it at all."

Ging's left hand shifted and tilted his chin up until Kite had to look at him and Kite couldn’t help but tense, bracing himself for something unknown.

"If that's the case," Ging said flatly, "maybe he's not the one who should give up."

For a long second it felt like Kite's heart stopped beating. The sound of rain hitting the ground cut out, leaving only the thunderous rush of blood in his ears and his own shuddering breath, the low sound of Ging relentlessly speaking.

"I'm surprised," he said. "I expected you to understand that there could be no compromise. Victory or death. That is what the world is for a Hunter. That is the pride that we stake our lives upon, that we would die with dignity for before giving up. If that's something that you can't handle..."

"No," Kite breathed, panic-stricken. "I can- I can handle it, master, I can, I swear-"

Ging paused for a moment and Kite waited for his verdict, offering no defense for himself. There was none- it was his own foolishness that had allowed him to think he was an exception to the rules that governed Hunters' lives. Better to die with dignity in battle than to waste away, always looking back on the failures that had left you in shambles. His mouth and stomach both twisted with guilt as he thought of the life he would've left Turner to, one characterized by worthless inadequacy. Lower even than the dogs on the street.

When Ging spoke again his voice was low and level, less obviously angry but still heavy, clear and commanding in such a way that it couldn't be interpreted but as an order.

"What happens to hunters that cannot hunt?"

Kite closed his eyes for a moment, both relieved to know that he had another chance and drowning in abhorrence at the prospect of ending another's life. But there wasn't a choice, not really, he’d already made it long ago, and Crazy Slots had already puffed into being by his right hand and was trilling through its numbers.

"... They," he answered quietly, taking the weight of the scythe in his hands as it curled into being, "die."

It was heavy. Everything felt heavy, the rain dragging hair and cloth down to the ground with it, the effort it took to find purchase in the shifting mud. Turner's unmoving body had sunk into the ground slightly and his daggers were too streaked with mud to catch glints of light anymore. Crazy Slots remained silent as Kite lifted the scythe, the force of the wind sending his hair and coat flying so that they obscured everything but his hands.

The downward swing, inevitably, met its mark.

\--

It was difficult to dig while the excess of rain was still pouring from the sky.

Kite calculated mechanically how much deeper the grave would have to be because of how the rain would erode the hill. Three feet past six? The blood was being washed away as well, so wild animals wouldn’t be as attracted to the prospect of fresh meat. Ging had wrapped the body in a thick shroud, as well, which would dampen the scent. Three feet would be fine. He’d make it four to be sure.

“I can dig,” Ging offered softly, standing on the edge of the hole.

Kite’s head shook in negation, sending drops of water flying from the ends of his hair. “I’m almost done.”

“You’re tired,” Ging probed, kneeling. The top of the hole was a ways above Kite’s head, so he would’ve had to crane his neck to see him. He didn’t look. “And you’re still bleeding, Kite…”

“I want to do it,” Kite heard himself say adamantly. “This, at least.”

Ging stayed still for a moment, then stood and stepped back. Kite felt a distant relief that he didn’t have to explain further. Ging was more than perceptive, after all, and he had an even better understanding of what constituted showing respect to your opponent than Kite did. He would know already that it was Kite’s duty to dig the grave himself. A last gesture, tarnished with apology. Turner deserved better than what he’d gotten. This, at least, Kite could give.

The hole was uneven and constantly being refilled as the mud dripped down the walls. There was water up to Kite’s ankles. A paltry offering.

Ging hoisted Kite out of the grave when it was as done as it would get. They lowered the piece of Turner’s corpse down together with a long cloth; Kite had to drop in again to make sure the shroud and cloth were bound tightly enough to hold when the mud made them slippery. He watched his hands check the bindings, not quite experiencing it. He could feel the outline of the body beneath the shroud, but he contemplated with detached mildness that for so long as it was hidden away, it might not be Turner’s body at all. It might have been replaced by loose rocks, or a sack of potatoes. He’d kept his eyes wide open, like Ging had taught him, as Turner’s head fell from his shoulders, but the memory was so uncertain, so dreamlike. Kneeling in the grave, Kite felt an unnerving disbelief that any of it was happening at all.

“Kite,” Ging called, the sound grounding Kite in his own body again. He looked up. Ging was a silhouette against the stormy sky. “That’s enough. Come back up.”

“Okay, master.”

And then there was only to fill in the hole. The shovel had already left blisters across Kite’s palms. Ging’s fingers brushed against the handle in a silent offer, but Kite’s fingers stayed clenched around it. He’d failed once, when the stakes were highest, so he wouldn’t fail again. He would do what he was supposed to do. It would be easier to simply wait until the ground seeped over the body by itself—it would, eventually. The mud was too liquid not to even out. But Turner deserved better than that, so little by little the formless mud pile was diminished and the grave refilled.

However long it took to accomplish, once it was done Ging laid a hand on his shoulder from just behind him. He spoke gently, perhaps remorsefully. Kite vaguely recalled Ging saying that he didn’t like dwelling on maudlin topics or getting punitive with people. It seemed ridiculous, now, that he’d ever thought he’d seen Ging get angry before.

“If you stay out here any longer, you’ll catch a cold.”

Kite blinked slowly as Ging shifted forward, standing close enough that Kite’s shoulder was pressed against his chest. “Master,” he said flatly, not looking away from the grave, “this isn’t what I wanted.”

It was more of an observation than anything else. Ging stayed silent for a long moment, finally lifting his hand from Kite’s shoulder to lay on the top of his head. Kite automatically followed the guidance, tilting his head until it was pressed sideways against Ging’s.

“It’s what you asked for,” Ging said pensively, stroking his hair. “And it’s what you got. Hunters are nothing else but Hunters. We live for as long as we can catch our prey.”

He wasn’t sure how he felt about the hole through his hat. It would need ugly stitching to close. He could simply replace it, but just the thought made his fingers close around the brim rebelliously. It would feel like a betrayal. Later, it would be pleasing to imagine that telling Ging what the hat meant to him would make Ging blush and grumpily grumble about sappiness. For the moment he thought it could be disrespectful to divert his attention from reality, as removed from it as he already was.

It would probably be disrespectful as well to try and throw away the reminder of Turner’s efforts. He had fought well. He shouldn’t be forgotten like a nameless animal, stepped over in the course of loftier goals. He would keep the hat, stitch it up, wear it in Turner’s honor as well as for his own sentimental attachment. That seemed the sort of noble thing a warrior would do.

His coat was hanging on the hook near his door, dripping. A sizeable puddle had already formed beneath it and around Kite’s feet. Ging fared better, having paused to dry himself off before poking his head in to find Kite still staring stock-still at his hat. Said hat lay on the dresser as Ging tousled his hair with a towel, getting it to damp rather than drenched.

“Kite,” he said, quietly enough that Kite had to make an effort to get himself to listen closely. “I know it’s hard, but there’s no point in not taking care of yourself. He’s dead; you are still alive. Living people catch colds if they stay in wet clothes too long. You know that, right? It’s over. It’s done. You can’t take it back, so there’s no use dwelling on it. We can only try not to make the same mistakes twice.”

He paused, perhaps expecting some response that Kite didn’t give. An ember of spite that he knew was unfair burned in the back of his mind, spitting at how on top of everything else he had to act like nothing had happened, like each time he closed his eyes he didn’t see blood pouring from the stump between Turner’s shoulders. He was too tired to even think of anything to say. Ging took the towel away and examined his face. Something in Kite’s expression made him close his eyes and sigh, pressing the towel into Kite’s hands. “Clean yourself up and go to sleep.”

Kite’s head dipped in a nod, relieved to have an order, to have a clear course of action. Left to his own devices he wasn’t sure if he’d have simply stood at the foot of the bed until he was too exhausted to stay awake. Ging knew how to deal with situations like these and he trusted that Kite would be able to. So he must be able to. Funny, how so often Ging knew what limits Kite was capable of pushing past better than Kite did.

Only two of his injuries needed stitching, and that was including the hat. The rest would be fine with bandages. It hurt less than he would’ve expected when the curved needle sewed his body back together. Convenient. The towels laying around the sink turned steadily redder and the roll of bandages shrank. The cut across his cheek was the last and, after it was prodded unsuccessfully by fingers trying to arrange the gauze properly, it took a while for him to realize that the panel above the sink was not a flickering screen but a mirror reflecting his own actions. It felt slightly ridiculous. He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t recognized himself.

At least it made it easier to wipe away the little rivulets of blood running down his cheek. As the soft, damp texture of the towel rubbed against his skin he little by little reconnected the actions he saw in the mirror and the actions he felt his body doing. Even when the blood was gone he wiped it away. It was difficult to stop doing the first action he’d registered as his own in… however much time. If he stopped he might lose his tenuous hold on his own senses.

Even so he had to put the towel down and reach for the gauze eventually. He had a distinct moment of confusion stretching out a hand that must have been his but didn’t quite feel like it. The more aware of his body’s aches he became the more disconcerting it was to reinhabit it. As he brought the gauze up to his face small raw pains shot through his hands from the blisters he’d gotten while—

The gauze fell into the sink as he jammed the joint at the base of his right thumb into his mouth and bit down and stopped breathing rather than sob aloud. The taste of blood washed over his tongue and he couldn’t block it out, couldn’t step away from his body anymore, and he wasn’t sure if that was worse or better because feeling this had the physical force of anguish but feeling nothing was like becoming his own ghost, watching from a distance as a dead body that wasn’t his anymore walked.

He ended up sunken to the floor, his back pressed to the sink cabinet and his forehead pressed to his knees. He curled up as tightly as he could, his left arm wrapped around his knees, and fought with all the energy he had left to cry silently and as little as possible. He hadn’t cried like this for ten years. He’d never had the leeway for weakness, not then and not now; he couldn’t afford not to move on.

It was easier to think of the mob henchman than to think of Turner, though the sight and sound of the former’s death were a more gruesomely graphic stain in his memory. But that had been done in a moment of thoughtless panic, a burst of violence expressed through a sharp whistle and the gnash of dogs’ teeth. He had been defending himself. However much he repeated the Hunter’s code of honor to himself, recited over and over that once someone was a Hunter they could never stop being a Hunter, he couldn’t push away the biting thought that he hadn’t had to kill Turner. He could have given up. The option had been there and he’d chosen not to take it. It couldn’t even be called self-defense in the end because Turner had been a helpless victim in the jaws of death.

And Turner hadn’t done anything  _ wrong _ .

A henchman was a faceless thing in a mob but Turner had had friends. Family. People he cared deeply about, people who had faith in him, faith that would be returned with nothing but a license, clean and shining in a crisp envelope, and a useless note that couldn’t be anything but genteel platitudes.  _ He died bravely; He died with pride; He fought well and has our highest respect; He was a Hunter to the end; He kept his honor to the end; He died free of regret. Here is where he is buried, deep in the mud, an unmarked grave dug by his murderer _ .

It wasn’t fair, he thought petulantly. He had deserved better. He had deserved to learn. He had worked for years to get Ging’s attention and be found worthy of a chance that Kite had already stolen from him years ago. And through what? Stubbornness? A child’s fear of loneliness? Turner had strived to deserve what Kite had simply demanded, ignorantly, selfishly.

Kite breathed slowly, evenly around his hand. He was trembling with either the cold or the effort of staying silent. Whenever the idea of speaking up so much as flickered through his mind it was shut down, repulsed. He couldn’t allow himself to be found like this, to be found, he had to stay hidden. He would take care of himself. He would get over his weakness and move forward, stronger. The premise of the battle, he saw now, was that one of them would become the blood sacrifice to the other’s strength.

He didn’t feel very strong.

\--

The next day, unsurprisingly, he’d woken up with a stuffy nose.

He hadn’t been able to find the energy to truly wash himself off or warm up. He hadn’t even dried off fully, really, though he had managed to exchange his wet clothes for his loose nightgown before dragging the sheets off the bed to curl up on the floor. The mattress was too soft.

It would have been worse, probably, if Ging hadn’t taken care of his hair. It was still knotty and unkempt, but he pulled it into a ponytail rather than deal with untangling it. It could wait.

Ging was already most of the way packed when Kite knocked on the connecting door. He nudged the door open with his foot and eyed Kite’s ponytail and the dark circles under his eyes. “… Hey.”

“Hi,” Kite replied tiredly. “I have a request.”

Ging leaned on the doorframe and crossed his arms, frowning slightly. “What is it?”

“I’d like to check the grave and make sure it wasn’t eroded by the storm.”

It was a nervous habit of Ging’s to run a hand over his stubble, and he did so. “We’re on a pretty tight schedule. It’ll have to be fast.”

“That’s fine,” Kite accepted without question. He didn’t want to linger past what was dutiful anyway.

“Alright. Get packed and we’ll check out.”

There was a dip in the ground where Turner was buried, a consequence of dirt settling. But it wasn’t significant enough to warrant repair, so Kite only lingered by the side of it. Not twenty feet away a rock was cleanly cut horizontally, its peak laying on the ground next to it. Rather symbolic, he thought vaguely.

“Satisfied?” Ging asked, standing just behind him as he had the previous night.

Kite didn’t answer for a long moment. He debated back and forth with himself whether he should confess. Ging wouldn’t like to hear it. But better to own up than be found out. “I still don’t understand,” he said quietly. “I know that pride is the most important thing to a Hunter, but… It just doesn’t make  _ sense _ . Why is it better to die than to be insulted?”

As the words left his mouth he recalled asking the same question the day he’d first met Ging and they turned bitter. He hadn’t learned anything since then. Still a street rat at heart.

“You’d prefer an enemy to take pity on you?” Ging asked. “To crush your ambitions and leave you to fend for yourself?”

Kite couldn’t suppress a harsh laugh. “You say that like it’s never happened to me before.”

Ging stayed silent and Kite pulled the brim of his hat down almost over his eyes. His other hand balled up into a fist and when he spoke again his voice was shaking. “What’s the use of pride if it kills you? What good is honor if it means you can’t show mercy? None of the powerful people I’ve met with you would last a month if they lost everything and had to scrounge in the garbage. They’d starve themselves before they laid a hand on someone else’s scraps. And for what? They’re dead in the end anyway. What’s the point of having pride if everyone just looks down on you anyway? Nobody cares that you’re fucking suffering nobly. It doesn’t matter to anybody but you and then you die at it doesn’t make a damn  _ difference _ !”

His hands were trembling as he rounded on Ging and nearly shouted. “It doesn’t matter if somebody steps on you or kicks you when you’re down or whatever! That’s not worth dying over! That’s just _what_ _happens_!!”

He cut himself off, breathing harshly. Ging’s neutral expression hadn’t shifted as Kite yelled at him, though Kite’s face was twisted between fury and grief. Little by little Kite caught his breath and his gaze lowered from Ging’s face to his feet, the violence of his outburst crumbling into dejection. Ging put his hand on Kite’s shoulder and Kite closed his eyes.

“Kite,” Ging said evenly, “that’s not the world you live in anymore. You’re a Hunter now. We live by different rules than the ones you’re used to.”

“And what are those?” Kite asked, sniffing and tilting his face away. “I can’t understand them. I want to, master, I do, but—they just don’t make any sense to me at all.”

Again, Ging lifted his hand from Kite’s shoulder to lay on his head, cupping his cheek. “Hunters are nothing else but Hunters. We live for as long as we can catch our prey.

“Turner Firmamentum couldn’t catch it. You could. He was strong, but died because he was too weak to reach his goal. That’s how this world works. He agreed to the fight, so he was prepared to die. The responsibility lies on his shoulders.”

Kite shook his head minutely. “I’m the one who killed him. I didn’t have to.”

“If you hadn’t killed him, you would have died,” Ging said matter-of-factly. The irrefutable certainty in his voice sent a chill down Kite’s spine. “Or lost the right to call yourself a Hunter. There is no choice involved, Kite. A Hunter must always be in pursuit of their prey. A true Hunter must always capture their prey. There is no walking away. Hunters are nothing else but Hunters.”

Kite shuddered and sniffed again, staring at Turner’s grave out of the corner of his eye. There didn’t seem to be a difference between failing and dying. One was the natural consequence of the other. It wasn’t far off from the life he’d lived for nigh on fifteen years. “Hunters aren’t supposed to Hunt other Hunters.”

“I wouldn’t call this a Hunt. More of a duel.” Ging brought Kite’s face forward until he looked up again and Ging raised his eyebrows. “But it’s true that not everyone at the Association would see it that way.”

Kite blinked slowly and nodded. It would be easy to keep secret. He never even wanted to think of it again, let alone speak of it.

“There’s one other reason he died. He, and you, agreed to this fight with the understanding that one would die. Tacitly, you both agreed to fight with all your strength so that the winner would grow more powerful than before. Turner died for your sake as well as for the sake of his pride. That is why you owe him the highest respect you can give.”

Blood sacrifice, Kite recalled dully. He’d gotten that right if nothing else. Ging turned him around to face the grave and spoke into his ear quietly.

“I know it is hard for you to understand, but you have a duty to your prey. You must not hold back. When Hunters, even just  _ Nen _ users, fight, there is no such thing as mercy. These are the rules you agreed to live by.”

“But,” Kite said, a last tiny protest. “If they give up the fight, then it’s over…”

“If you want to be able to fight without killing or dying, you will have to be much stronger than this.”

Kite closed his eyes and breathed out slowly, his shoulders drooping. He had simply been too weak to get what he wanted. That was more familiar ground. He would have to carry on regardless, as he always had, and try harder.

“There is one last thing to do,” Ging said softly, squeezing his shoulder. Kite straightened his back and nodded, stepping forward to look down at the unmarked, undecorated pit in which Turner’s body lay nine feet down. It was all too easy to imagine himself decomposing in Turner’s place and he felt a strange sense of terror mixed with relief that he could finally recognize the right course of action.

“Thank you for all you have done for me,” he said, inclining his head. Even to his own ears his voice sounded flatly formal. “I never intended to insult you, but I will respect your memory always and continue to honor your sacrifice.

“I’m sorry,” he added, more tremulously. “I’m so sorry. It won’t happen again.”

 

\--

 

The stretch of road across the mountains that bordered the next city they would stop at was unceasingly winding. The longest section of it that went in a straight line was approximately the length of a city block. Though the road was well-made and there were only rarely other vehicles, the going was slow. It didn’t take long for Ging to get bored and put down in hood of their rented car, grinning and driving recklessly fast around the curves so that the wind buffeted them from all sides. He’d gotten to rest his eyes for half an hour or so, Kite thought wryly in the passenger seat, his ponytail whipping around his face. It was enough to be getting on with.

As they climbed higher and higher, the city disappearing into the distance behind them, he quietly meditated on what Ging had said. More than once he’d looked down at his hands expecting to see them still clutching the scythe, or been startled by the wet, flat thud of a limp body slumping over into mud that wasn’t there. The memory carried a strange uncertainty, the same he’d felt checked the wrappings of the shroud. It had happened, that much was certain. All the evidence around him pointed to that conclusion. And the vision of the act itself—a blur of metal, spray of blood, a last convulsion of death throes—was too vivid not to be true. He rubbed his nose, certain for a moment that he could still smell blood, but his bandages were still in place so there wasn’t a source anywhere nearby.

His fingers brushed across the gauze on his cheek and for a moment he recalled being slapped as a misbehaving child would be. Would Turner have accepted being spared? Unlikely. He’d objected so powerfully to Kite refusing to administer a fatal blow the first time, the second wouldn’t have been any different. It was only the fact of his unconsciousness that had allowed Kite the time to get over his hangups. Had the battle continued, it could only have ended when Kite was the one to fall.

Even so, guilt gnawed at his chest. Kite closed his eyes and leaned his elbow against the empty frame of the car window, resting his chin in his hand. It was a rock and a hard place, in truth. Kill or be killed. Ging had said he lived in a different world now, but he wondered how different it actually was. Fighting for safety and food had just been replaced by fighting for pride and a Hunter’s greed.

He sighed heavily. It wasn’t as simple as that and it wasn’t fair to reduce it that way. If it were the case that nothing had changed, he wouldn’t have such a violently adverse reaction to the thought of giving up as a Hunter.

The wind slowed and he opened his eyes, sitting up straight again. Ging swung the car into a barely-marked parking place by the side of the road on a small outcropping. There wasn’t room for more than one vehicle and a bench overlooking the steep dropoff; sprawled out along the horizon the city they were leaving looked small enough to pick up with one hand.

“Stretching break,” Ging announced, shoving open his door and hopping out. “Ugh, driving is so boring.”

Kite followed his lead and exited the car, wandering past him as Ging grumbled and stretched his legs. The craggy basin where Turner was buried was hidden behind the sheer wall of rock they’d just driven through. If he squinted, it was possible to make out where the tall building of their hotel was.

“Not gonna say you forgot something, are you?” Ging asked jokingly, walking over to lean on the back of the bench.

“No.”

Ging frowned and glanced away. Out of the corner of his eye Kite could see him fidgeting; crossing and uncrossing his arms, looking up at the sky and down to the shrubs managing to grow between the stones, shifting his weight from foot to foot, scratching his cheek. All hallmarks of when he was feeling awkward. For someone so impossible to predict, Ging certainly was unsubtle at times.

With a put-upon sigh Ging settled and looked at him again. “If you want me to leave you at the next town, you just have to say so.”

“What?” Kite asked, his stomach dropping. The wind whirled by like a slap in the face. “Why would I—?”

“I’m just saying, it can happen.”

Kite stared at him speechlessly, something approaching dread making his heart race. Ging shrugged. “Look, Kite, I just don’t want to have you with me if it’s not something you really want.”

“I do,” Kite said, bewildered and more than a little hurt. “Of course I do, master, why are you—why are you saying this…?”

“When I agreed to let you be my student,” Ging said, now stolid in comparison to Kite’s restless movements, “you said that you were willing to kill when it was necessary. But saying that and doing it is different. So I just want to reiterate that going forward, you have to be prepared for this, and worse than this, to happen again. If that’s not possible for you…”

He trailed off and looked away, closing his eyes. Kite couldn’t breathe, suddenly.

“I can’t afford to carry your weight.”

A bloom of warm wetness on his arm indicated that he was tense enough to reopen his wounds, but once more Kite could only observe his senses distantly.

“Next time,” Ging said evenly, “I won’t intervene.”

The impending terminality of a  _ next time _ made Kite’s stomach twist, but that took a backseat to his whirling thoughts and the imperative need to give the right answer to an uncertain question. “I told you I would and I will—I will, that’s why I promised n-next time it wouldn’t happen again, I just. I just didn’t understand but now I do, or I’ll try to understand, I’ll try and I’ll do better, you won’t need to intervene, I’ll do it myself—I want to do it, if that’s what being a Hunter means then I want to do it so I can be a Hunter…”

He balled his hands up into fists to try and stop their shaking. “I want to stay,” he said miserably. “I want to be your student. Haven’t I…” He looked up and met Ging’s gaze desperately. “Haven’t I already proven that?”

Ging regarded him steadily. “How many ends are there to the Hunter Exam?” he asked suddenly.

The question threw Kite off-balance. “… Two?”

“And they are?”

“The end of the Exam proper,” Kite answered, striving to figure out the trick part of the question. “And when someone learns to use  _ Nen _ .”

“Do you think the Exam has an ending other than those?”

Kite hesitated for a few seconds before tentatively answering “No.”

“Right,” Ging said, and Kite gave a sigh of relief. “Other than those, there’s no ending. That’s what you have to understand. Every decision you make while bearing that license reflects on who you aspire to be as a Hunter. Every choice and action has consequences; ones you must be ready to shoulder. Turner bears the responsibility for dying. You bear the responsibility for denying him the death he deserved.”

“A Hunter’s death?”

Ging shook his head. “No. There’s no such thing. Hunters do not die. Hunters catch their prey. Dying is the same as failing the Exam. Only someone living can claim a Hunter’s license. The dead forfeit their right to it.”

“… Then what kind of death…?”

“One that didn’t strip away his pride as a person.”

Kite stared at the ground. It was difficult to think clearly with his heart still threatening to beat out of his chest. The looming possibility of abject failure was haunting to recognize over his head.

Ging sighed and dropped his serious demeanor, rubbing the back of his head and grumbling. “Well, it’s like I said that day we met. It’s not really something I can explain, it’s just a feeling. You just have to come to understand it on your own.

“… It’s weird to try and put it into words,” he added, looking out over the recumbent landscape below them. “It always felt obvious to me that it was better to die than to accept giving up something I wanted to get or keep. I was pretty shocked, actually, to find that people thought differently. But I guess I’m just a Hunter at heart.”

He looked back at Kite and smiled crookedly, lifting up his hat brim with a finger so that the light reached his face. “Hey. If you really want to stay, then don’t get discouraged by just this. Not everyone’s a born Hunter, but there are plenty who learned to be one.”

Kite squinted as the sun got in his eyes. “… Okay. I think I understand a little better now.”

“Good.” Ging made to return to the car, but paused when Kite caught his sleeve in one hand. “Uh. Yeah?”

“… I want to stay with you,” Kite said tentatively. “The only things I want in this world are to survive and to stay with you.”

Ging turned bright red. Kite couldn’t help but smile as he huffed and rubbed his face in a flustered way. “W-well, jeez, I mean, thanks, I guess. I, uh, I like having you around too. So.” His mouth twisted in a grumpy pout as he admitted in a mumble, “I guess putting up with teaching sometimes isn’t totally bad.”

\--

There were a lot of things that Ging was good at. One of the most prominent ones was being able to act like certain things had never happened.

Generally, this applied to the little embarrassing things that were inevitable when traveling extensively with someone. In the wilderness privacy was something of a luxury. Thankfully these were few and far between; neither of them were exactly sticklers for proper social conduct, so what may have been embarrassing to a normal person passed between them without comment. It helped that Kite collapsed exhausted into sleep more often than not, too tired to dream in more than vague and nonsensical shapes.

Those small moments, though awkward, were something that Kite recalled with a certain kind of pleasure. It was impossible to share an uncomfortable moment with someone if essentially every person one approached reacted with intense disgust. They almost felt like inside jokes, silly little stories that they could put out of mind until it was time to tease one another. Getting companions on a dig site or a reconstruction project to laugh and open up about themselves was easy when they could go back and forth trying to one-up each other on who could bring up the most mortifying incidents. From what those people said about their own embarrassing stories, refusing to let someone live something down was what happy family members did to one another.

He was happy. Despite everything, he was still happy. He just had to remember that he was happy.

After Turner, Kite looked at other Hunters differently. It was still nice to meet them, once Ging had reassured him each time that this person wasn’t the next challenger. They were interesting people. But each time he looked them in the eye and shook their hand, he remembered Turner’s resolute face and wondered if they would condemn the choice he had made. Asking and finding out wasn’t an option in the slightest, of course; assuaging the question that crawled on his neck wasn’t worth risking his life with Ging.

It was the same as his inside jokes, he told himself. In idle moments the memories played on loop, so vivid at times that he would come out of them convinced he was dreaming everything that had happened since. Strange, to experience things without feeling like he was actually there. Strange, to smile and engage temporary companions in conversation while he felt his hair weighed down with rain and his hands weighed down with blood. Ging was good at noticing when it was happening and drawing attention away from Kite’s inevitably distant responses. He was good at dragging Kite back into reality without acknowledging the looming specter.

In a perverse way, Kite was glad that Turner had come to challenge his worth. He had been able to prove himself, solidify his resolve into something bound by steel. This was nothing. He had done it before, and Turner’s death had been far less brutal than that of the nameless mob member Kite had sacrificed so many years ago. Once more he felt the jaws of death snapping at his heels, spurring him forward; he would survive, no matter what. He could survive with the knowledge of what he had done. It couldn’t be worse than it had been before, he reasoned, since now he had Ging’s stolid presence to rely on for constancy. And now this secret thing was an undeniable, unshakeable bond between he and Ging that no one else had.

Normal people wouldn’t understand. The Association wouldn’t understand.

When he looked other Hunters in the eye, Kite knew that they wouldn’t understand Ging the way that he did.

Other than that, things more or less carried on the way they always had.

\--

“Kite,” Ging said, patting the top of his head with a look of concern on his face. “You’ve really gotta calm down with all this.”

A bold number five sat firmly in Crazy Slots’ mouth, its feet once more twisted into a long staff. At the other end, rather than the long, curved blade of the scythe an angular spearhead extended out another foot, the back corners of its triangular shape extended backwards to form two extra points. Kite spun it around his wrist, getting acclimated to its weight and balance. “What do you mean?”

“I mean you’ve made, like, three new weapons in as many months? There’s no rush, you know, you can take your time.”

“I know,” Kite muttered, digging Crazy Slots’ hat into the dirt (“Hey! Watch it, asshole!”) and looking up at the tip of the blade that reached just above his head. “But these weapons are easy. I don’t need any more time than this.”

It helped that he’d plunged headlong into his training, devoting his attention to nothing else in his every spare minute. If it was possible, his little notebooks for planning out his ideas were filled with even worse handwriting than usual, rapid scrawls in frantic shapes. The same sketches of what he was planning to make, over and over, from every possible angle. He’d held the images in his head for the first two weapons, but for the next three every conceivable detail was put on paper.

The first few days he’d begun imagining what he wanted, a plain mace, he’d tried to keep his mind on track. It hadn’t worked; he could only recall the familiar weight of the scythe in his hands. Writing everything down helped him focus.

“Fair enough,” Ging said, shrugging. “But you should still slow down. Now that you’ve got a good number of basic weapons, if you want to start adding embellishments now’s a good time.”

“What do you mean?”

“All of what you currently have rely solely on your Conjurer abilities and your own prowess with the weapon. That’s not a bad thing, and certainly plays to your strengths, but it could be good to have a weapon that also uses a Transmutation ability, for example, since that’s your second most useful category.”

Kite looked over the plain, newly formed spear uncertainly. “Do you think I should? What would that entail?”

“It’s up to you,” Ging said. “But as you keep going, having weapons with restrictions will make it easier to summon them. And I think you could form some really interesting stuff, judging from how good you already are at Conjuring.”

Kite ducked his head and fought to control the flush spreading across his face.

\--

The second came four and a half months after the first and was much shorter than him.

“Yu Jianjun,” they said cheerfully, immediately extending their hand to Kite. “Nice to finally meet you in person, Ging, and you must be Kite?”

“Yes,” Kite said, holding their hand for half a second before letting his own drop to his side.

“Taller than I was expecting!” They put a hand on their own head and mimed squishing themself down, sticking out their tongue and scrunching up their face as their knees bent. “I was just cursed with tiny genes, I guess. But that just means I get to quote Jigglelance—“though she be but little, she is fierce”! And I can compensate for my height in other ways…"

They shifted their oversized pack, which had a number of rods and pieces of thick cloth sticking out from their shoulders. It seemed like it would extend out into something, but it was unclear what. Kite looked it over carefully and Jianjun grinned at him.

“You’ll get to see it soon enough, if you last that long.”

Kite remained silent and looked away. Jianjun chuckled under their breath, their attention switching to Ging. “So d’you know when the ferry’s going to get here?”

“Any minute now,” Ging answered, glancing out toward the bay. The distant shape of the island they were headed to was an anticlimactic lump on the horizon. “And then it’s about an hour to get over the water.”

“—Species Hunter,” Jianjun said, pointing a thumb at themself and flashing their teeth in a grin. “I spe—ding birds.”

Right on cue, a gull screeched and dived toward the ocean water off the port side of the ferry. Waves rippled out behind the boat as it cut through the water, its motor humming loudly so that anyone onboard had to shout to be heard. That wasn’t a particularly large problem, since the three of them and the captain were the only ones present and Kite was only barely making an effort to hear what Jianjun was saying anyway.

“The moutains—ful at dawn, from the sky!” they were yelling, gesturing animatedly toward the approaching island. Periodically, the combination of the motor and the waves crashing into the sides of the ship left their mouth moving soundlessly. “They’re where I found the—”

“I thought so!” Ging yelled back, smiling and leaning forward to look at the picture Jianjun proffered. Kite spared a glance; in it, they were doing a victory pose next to a roc easily ten times their size, if not more. It was giving the camera the stinkeye, its wings partially spread to show off feathers that must have been about ten feet long. “And it was named after you, right?”

Jianjun beamed and nodded, their cheeks turning what Kite thought of as an unflattering shade of red. “ _ Cathartes jianius _ !”

“Congratulations,” Ging shouted. “It really is impressive. Are any more of them living on the island?”

They shook their head. “—dangered species, so they were reloc—ore suited to their size!”

“This island wasn’t good enough?”

“Once humans started visiti—less carrion! So they n—”

“It leaves a good empty space for a duel, at least,” Ging said loudly. Kite looked out at the island, ten minutes away if they kept going at the pace they’d set thus far, and didn’t laugh like either of them. The memory of how taciturn Turner had been before the first duel flickered through his mind—Jianjun was a one-person party in comparison, not seeming bothered in the slightest at the prospect of what was to come. As a Hunter should be, Kite reminded himself—no one achieved their ambitions without facing challenges, and hesitation was nothing more than an insult to the opposition. Jianjun had simply accepted the reality of their situation with a smile on their face.

The setting wasn’t all that different from where he had defeated Turner. Rock, looming above them in steep hills as they strode out into the middle of the basin. Unevenly spaced pillars of stone lanced up toward the sky, largely fifteen feet thick in diameter. Some of them had already toppled, leaving huge boulders with small shrubs growing in their cracks strewn around the area.

Less dirt, Kite thought to himself. Whoever ended up digging was going to have a rough time. The sky was clear, at least.

Jianjun shook his hand with a smile and said “No hard feelings, eh?”

Kite blinked slowly, feeling the scratch every laugh on the ferry had left on his nerves. Strange, how they could act like nothing was wrong. It was probably because nothing  _ was _ wrong, a fact that Jianjun evidently understood better than Kite did, like Ging. It made sense that they and Ging would get along well.

“Of course,” Kite said, smiling thinly and dropping their hand. He had never hated anyone with such poisonous bitterness.

Despite their unbothered attitude, they didn’t immediately leap into the fray after taking the requisite ten steps as Turner had; they kept their distance, watching him carefully. Kite stayed in place as well, resigned to the fight but loath to initiate it himself. They remained in a kind of standoff, muscles twitching in response to the subtle movements of the other, both poised to move at the drop of a pin.

It was Jianjun who finally sighed and bent over backwards into a handstand, walking away from Kite on their hands. “Might as well get started,” they called. They pivoted on their palm and looked at him with a challenging smirk. “You coming?”

Kite tensed, but there was nothing for it but to engage. That Jianjun was doing something like taking their feet off the ground, which could only offer a disadvantage, spoke to their planning something that had to do with their  _ Hatsu _ . He didn’t summon Crazy Slots yet, focusing his  _ Nen _ on his legs so that he could close the distance between them in less than a second.

Unsurprisingly Jianjun had anticipated him and spun around on the heels of their hands to meet him with a flurry of kicks; Kite blocked them easily enough, but they succeeded in keeping him at bay enough that he couldn’t knock Jianjun down. They were quite a bit shorter than he was, so he should have been able to sweep their arms with a low kick easily enough—his range was larger, and they would have to take at least one hand off the ground to try and block, which would endanger their balance that much more. But Jianjun was obviously practiced at dealing with fights against people taller than them, and they kept hopping backwards just out of his reach or pushing themself straight up and striking out at his chin to force him to retreat that much more.

He should summon Crazy Slots, Kite knew. He should Conjure a weapon and make the fight that much shorter before Jianjun had a chance to use their own  _ Hatsu _ . But still, still, despite the knowledge that the jaws of death were all but digging into his throat, he didn’t want to be left with an unmarked grave at his feet. It was an insult but if he could just hurt Jianjun enough to break through their determination, make them see how for all their laughter and confidence their case was  _ hopeless _ —

His foot connected with their gut and the air left their lungs in a rush; a savage smile that was more of a snarl tore its way across Kite’s face at the sound. They were thrown into a rock pillar so that their pack, with all its rods and edges, dug into their back. Still upside-down, they only barely managed to keep themself in a handstand as they coughed. Kite didn’t give them more than a moment to breathe as he chased after them and his foot hit the pillar where Jianjun’s chest had been. They themself had managed to push themself off the ground just in time to leap out of the way of the attack.

Their fingers were digging into the stone, keeping them clinging sideways to the vertical face of the pillar, their feet still not touching anything but air. Kite looked up at them coldly, the brief satisfaction their pained grunt had given him gone. He just had to do it again, and again, until they got it through their skull that he was  _ better _ than them.

Just a little bit, he thought that using Crazy Slots would end the fight too quickly. More than he wanted to admit, the vicious, restless energy that had been crawling under his skin since the fight with Turner wanted Jianjun to  _ hurt _ .

Jianjun, above him, whistled. “That’s some decent bloodlust. I guess it’s the quiet ones you have to watch out for, after all.”

Kite didn’t dignify the comment with an answer, kicking off the ground himself to chase after them. What followed was a long sequence of evasive maneuvers. Having been hit once, Jianjun’s focus had redoubled and they were that much more slippery. Each strike Kite made landed only on air and stone. The pace of the bout quickened and quickened again until Kite couldn’t spare a thought for anything but anticipating Jianjun’s next move, reading the subtle flow of Jianjun’s  _ Ryu _ .

He stepped on a stone and it melted beneath his foot like butter.

Kite immediately brought up his guard and dove away, skidding across the ground until there was a solid ten feet between them. Again, the rocks that he came in contact with deformed smoothly—not cracking into fragments, but flattening out. The ground itself was becoming softer, he realized with no small trepidation. And the air was becoming significantly hotter.

Jianjun laughed and Kite’s gaze snapped up to them again. They brought their feet back to the ground and stood normally, rolling their head in a circle to stretch their neck. “Finally!” they said, a smirk spreading across their face, and tugged on the strap hanging over their shoulder.

Their pack expanded into a pair of cloth wings, modeled after those of bats. The wingspan was much, much wider than Jianjun was tall and they connected to the pack near their lower back. Kite couldn’t tell what the rods forming the bone structure were made out of, but he was willing to bet they had the durability of steel if not the weight. The wrist joint of the each wing had a wicked spike that would do horrid damage to something it struck at high speed.

“Going up,” Jianjun said, and the heat of the air became unbearably oppressive. The sudden heat created a huge updraft of wind that nearly took Kite off his feet and sent Jianjun soaring up above the tops of the rock pillars. Kite, gritting his teeth as he felt the bottoms of his feet beginning to blister and burn, followed them decidedly more messily by clawing his way up the rock face.

He hadn’t yet reached the top when Jianjun landed on the pillar adjacent to his and called out “If you’re curious, the condition is that it can’t be raining and I have to keep my feet off the ground and walls for five minutes straight! It doesn’t seem like long at first but let me tell you, during a fight time just  _ drags _ on.”

“Oh good,” Kite couldn’t help but snap, letting go of the pillar with one hand so he could turn and look at them. “Thank you for enlightening me. Would you like to continue, maybe elaborate on its weaknesses?”

Jianjun laughed. Below them, the ground was truly melting and turning red-hot. Every rock had lost its solid shape, spilling into a liquid form that glowed a bright shade of orange under shattered, blanketing clouds of black soot. The air was nothing short of unbearably sweltering.

“The floor,” they said dramatically, sweeping their arms out to encompass the entirety of the bubbling stone below them, “is now lava.”

They waited with an expectant expression. Kite blinked at them blankly. Their face faltered slightly as the seconds passed.

“Like the game? The children’s game. The floor is lava. You know about that, right?”

“No,” Kite said. “Why would the floor be lava?”

“Shit!” Ging suddenly yelled from the sidelines, safely perched atop a distant pillar. “I totally remember playing that!!”

“Thank you!” Jianjun yelled back, pointing over at him. “You can’t touch the ground anymore, because it’s lava!”

“That was obvious,” Kite muttered under his breath. The exultant look on their face and the sound of Ging clapping his hands together were getting under his skin as much as the prickling heat from below was. He fought the urge to squirm, the need to move almost overpowering as sweat dripped uncomfortably down his back. Jianjun’s  _ Hatsu _ was, though impressive, mostly  _ annoying _ . His fingers dug into the rock wall and he summoned Crazy Slots with an overly forceful flick of his wrist.

“Is it hot around here or is it just me?” the clown quipped.

“Shut your mouth,” Kite hissed to it. Jianjun had tensed at the sight of it and was warily watching him again, back in battle mode.

“I haven’t got a mouth,” Crazy Slots retorted snidely, but spun and trilled all the same. Kite kept his eyes trained on Jianjun. The violent rush of adrenaline through his body was making him want to scream, he just wanted to  _ move _ and Crazy Slots was taking too long and Jianjun would make their move soon enough, he just wanted to get it  _ over _ with—

Crazy Slots dinged and sang out “Six!”

Kite heard himself snort before he realized it was happening, and a lopsided smile just this side of a sneer stayed on his lips. Crazy Slots broke into four pieces and settled onto his forearms and shins, forming into a set of gauntlets and boots. Each piece had a long, thin opening, at either his heels or the back of his hand.

Perfect. For once, a weapon that fit his mood.

Jianjun’s eyebrows drew down and they stepped back, taking to the sky again on a hot updraft. Kite watched them, tilting his head back as he carefully arranged his feet to rest his heels against the wall. Once they were set he let go of his hold, falling forward just slightly so that he was kneeling on the vertical face, before an explosive blast of Nen erupted from the boots that sent a shockwave through the stone strong enough to shatter it and blasting him forward in a straight line to where Jianjun barely had time to drop out of the way.

Kite twisted in midair and sighted them again, pointing in the opposite direction with one hand and triggering another blast from there so that he changed directions and streaked toward them. Jianjun swore loudly, their eyes wide, and their wings reformed themselves so that they did a somersault and could kick their feet out to meet him. Kite evaded them with another rapid blast and kicked off the air, the recoil of the explosion flipping him over backwards as he shot up above Jianjun again.

The boots and gauntlets each had a guard attachment that slammed backwards on a track after each blast, absorbing some of the momentum for him, but they could only do so much and he always ended up having to accommodate the force of his own attacks with a series of flips. The stress of each blow put an enormous amount of strain on his joints, strain that would have been debilitating without the protection of his  _ Ryu  _ and what energy he could spare for Enhancement.

“Reel Barrage,” Crazy Slots had named it. “I would have done ‘Recoil Barrage’ if it didn’t miss out on the musical motif. We’ve all gotta make sacrifices.”

Reel Barrage was, more than anything else he’d designed or world go on to design, a double-edged sword. It gave him an incredible amount of speed and momentum, as well as providing an easy way to force an enemy away from him, and it worked at a versatile range. But every time it had come up in Crazy Slots thus far, he’d ended up barely able to bend his elbows and knees for about three days after only a few minutes of use.

It had probably been one of his worse ideas to design a weapon entirely around Emission and Enhancement, but—

Ging had been impressed, at least, for the gall of it if nothing else.

Jianjun rocketed up after him, striking out at his shoulder; Kite recognized the attempt to disorient him into falling and nailed them with a direct blast, spinning himself so that his hair whirled rapidly around his head and unbalancing them instead. The flashes of Jianjun he got when he faced them showed that they were falling back, retreating to watch what he did.

Kite grimly chased after them, ignoring the pained protests from his knees and ankles. He spared enough  _ Nen _ to Enhance their durability, but the majority of it had to go toward the explosions allowing him to fight on Jianjun’s level. Every one depleted his rapidly dwindling supply, and he had to use more of them than he ever had before just to keep up with their aerial maneuvers. They had the advantage, in both experience and setting, and over the course of the next thirty seconds he gained a number of deep gouges across his left shoulder and sides. But his aim was improving as he learned how they were inclined to dodge—their breath caught audibly as he came within a foot of their wing and his fingers just barely closed around air rather than cloth. The close call spurred Jianjun forward and their wings folded, sending them plummeting down at him with the sharp ridges of their wings poised to drive into his stomach.

Something in Kite’s shoulder snapped when he blasted himself out of the way; when he slammed into a rock pillar on his hands and knees and made a crater that gouged out a quarter of its diameter, his left arm dangled uselessly by his steadily bleeding side.

He regarded it distantly, more aggravated than anything else at the injury. It would considerably lessen his maneuverability in the air. The pain itself was definitely there, but adrenaline and the strange disconnect with his own body that often happened when he fought made it easy enough to ignore. It was useful, even, in how it fueled the merciless fury roiling in his gut.

Jianjun dived at him like a bird of prey again and Kite’s jaw tensed, his teeth grinding under the pressure. Jianjun rolled to drive their feet into the pillar he had clung to, creating a horizontal crack through it so that the boulder slid to the side and fell directly into the lava.

As molten rock sprayed into the air Jianjun adjusted their wings so that they could rocket away from the wave while barrel rolling; pressed to their back, the fingers of his right hand clenched hard enough around one wing that they had torn through the cloth, Kite relied on their freedom of movement to keep them both momentarily out of harm’s way. A rock outcropping grazed his cheek as Jianjun weaved around the walls, trying to slam him into them without harming their own wings.

His lungs were burning. His limbs were shaking. Below, and through the air, the lava was boiling madly. He’d been here before. He could feel Prima Cadenza in his hand rather than Reel Barrage’s weight on all four limbs. Jianjun’s short black hair was instead Turner’s shade of brown.

He wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.

Jianjun screamed as Kite, holding onto the cloth wing will all the force left in his body, blasted  _ Nen _ from all three of Reel Barrage’s forms that were useful to him still and the force off his heels slammed directly into their kidneys. The wing gave before his fingers did and it came off of Jianjun’s back into his hands, its mechanisms loosening uselessly. Jianjun, their descent sped up by the attack and not helped by the one cloth wing now making them tumble wildly through the air, plummeted toward the lava that instantaneously cooled into its original dirt form as they undid their  _ Hatsu _ . The ground cracked around their body when they hit it face-down. They spasmed once, and fell still. The dual attack to both sides of their back had probably broken their spine but Kite, quickly returning to the ground himself, wasn’t going to take chances.

One last explosion that propelled him downward to land on Jianjun’s body, one foot on the base of their neck and the other where the initial blow had landed at the base of their back, ended it. This time he was certain he felt Jianjun’s spine snap in both places, and the force of the landing had left their throat a mess of blood and snapped tendons.

They were dead.

“Good job,” Ging told him once his legs had given out and he was left on his back, his breath coming in ragged gasps, blood pooling around his sides and seeping through the bottom of his shoes where his blisters had ruptured. Ging rested a hand on his head kindly. Not five feet away, living heat seeped from Jianjun’s body until it was cold in death.

 

\--

 

He had to look on the bright side. Having the skin on the bottom of his feet left raw enough that he couldn’t stand on them without nearly fainting from pain, and his joints left all but broken so that he couldn’t stand on his own  _ anyway _ , meant that Ging had to carry him everywhere for a while. It was always nice, if embarrassing when Ging noticed him doing it, to be able to press his ear to Ging’s shoulder and listen to his heartbeat.

 

\--

 

The trek up the side of Mount Tabei was far, far easier than he remembered it being. It was, at least, satisfying to have concrete evidence that he was getting stronger. The vista stretched along the horizon, fading into a cloudy haze across distant miles of foliage and the towering Grand Willows. They took their time traipsing past obelisks of stone and clambering up sheer cliffs with the mountain goats who perched on tiny ledges to lick at salt deposits. Ging reached the top first and sat on the edge, looking down and laughing as Kite scraped flakes off the rock face and held them out carefully; the goat they were offered to bleated happily and licked his fingers, nuzzling his hand affectionately.

As its tongue scraped across his palm Kite’s chest ached with intense happiness and fear. If he closed his fingers too quickly on its muzzle, he could easily break its fragile bones and destroy its ability to eat. But of that fact it was blissfully ignorant and it placed its head in his hands with an implicit trust.

When he had to retract his arm to keep climbing it bleated sadly then returned to licking the mountainside, ultimately unperturbed. It sat well with Kite to think that he had affected its life in some small way, but it would return to normal easily enough. There were no dire consequences, no epic struggles. Animals were nicely simplistic in that way.

“Make a new friend?” Ging asked amusedly as Kite pulled himself up over the edge of the cliff to sit by his side.

“More or less,” Kite answered, his lips quirking up into a small smile as the goat trod carefully across the near-vertical surface to reach a new spot. “They must really crave a taste of that mineral, to climb so high.”

Ging hummed in agreement. A gust of wind, unhindered by any wall now that they were at the apex of the mountain, caught his cloak and Kite’s hair, making both whip through the air. It was icy, but didn’t faze either of them apart from Kite holding down his hat as a precaution. Far below, the same wind rushed through the sparse plant life and made it all dance in unison, each bowing gracefully rather than stand and be uprooted by the most powerful force. Miles off, the Grand Willows groaned deeply as the wind made their wood and roots strain, the drooping veils of their branches swaying, and then settle back into place.

Kite was loath to break the peaceful silence, but there was a job to be done. And as he became complacent he could feel his memories bubbling, surfacing, demanding his attention.

“This is where the herb grows, isn’t it?” he said over the top of nearly-audible heavy rainfall, shoving the scene back. It had gotten easier to do with time

“Yeah, just up there. We can grab them and head back whenever.” Ging twisted where he sat and pointed to a cluster of thin stemmed-plants not ten yards above them. Kite expectantly waited a beat, but Ging made no move to rise. Instead, he settled back into place and smiled out at the landscape below them. “I knew you’d remember where it grew. You really liked this place, didn’t you?”

“Oh,” Kite said, taken aback. “Yes, I did. I do.”

“More than the other places we’ve been.”

“… I think so.”

“How come?”

Another gust of wind that would have drowned out anything he said gave Kite the opportunity to think. “It’s… peaceful. And beautiful. All the humans are far away, so they can’t disturb what nature built.”

“So you like it because there’s nobody around?” Ging asked, grinning.

“Well, no, there’s the animals,” Kite pointed out. “They’re a lot easier to deal with than people, and they don’t mess everything up with pollution.”

He gestured out to the clear view in front of them. The sky went on for perfect blue miles save for in the east, where a dark grey smear of dirty fog demarcated the city. Ging nodded, resting his chin in his hand. “We’ve been to places far away from cities before. What makes this one different?”

Kite crossed his arms and frowned. “… But those places still had old ruins, or we were on the way to old ruins. People had been there and done whatever they wanted to it, and everything else just had to live with it. Here there aren’t even hiking trails.”

“If there were, it would be less peaceful?”

“Of course.”

Ging hummed thoughtfully. “Interesting. I always preferred places like ‘old ruins’, as you so eloquently call them, because they’re all the evidence we have of the people who lived before us. They built themselves up until their foundations crumbled and now we have to piece together everything that’s left to know anything about them.” His fingers twitched against his chin and his grin widened, his eyes lighting up at the very thought. “It’s a bit like letting them live again and tell their stories.”

Propping his chin up in his hands, Kite turned the idea over in his head. It certainly was a nice thought, and it went some ways toward explaining why archaeology specifically had captured Ging’s interest. “You like solving the mystery?”

A pleased smile flickered across Kite’s lips as Ging laughed, a lighthearted sound that fit in well with the carefree wind. “You could say that. I like putting together all the fragments, rearranging them until I hit upon the right positioning. Or until ‘we’ hit upon it, I should say, since I usually have a team helping me. It’s… satisfying, to put everything in its proper place. Figuring out one thing about a civilization leads to more trails to follow.” He shot Kite a wide grin. “More mysteries to unravel.

“But you’re not into that, huh?” he asked, pointing at Kite. “That’s not the kind of thing you want to Hunt. You like this place more than the digs we’ve been to.”

Kite nodded, his brow furrowing. He had already been a pro Hunter for nigh on four years, but it was true that he hadn’t much thought about what specifically he wanted to hunt. The act of asking the question itself grated on his nerves in a way he didn’t quite want to acknowledge; on some level he had simply assumed he would follow Ging forever. The idea of striking out on his own was… unappealing. If Ging was any example, Hunters rarely collaborated for any significant length of time, so Kite was loath to give up the situation he was already in.

“Anyway,” Ging said airily, falling to lay on his back with his hands pillowed beneath his head, “it’ll take us at least a day to get back to the city, so we might as well enjoy ourselves here for a while. That’s why I took this job, after all.”

Kite blinked, processing the statement. It  _ had _ been strange for Ging to travel all the way back here when he’d already sated his curiosity about the area. It wasn’t unheard of for him to want to see something more than once, but as glorious as the Grand Willows were to see from the height of the mountaintop there were other sights just as magnificent. And Ging wasn’t even looking at them, so that couldn’t have been why.

So then…

Kite blurted out the question before he could lose the nerve he’d gotten from the initial burst of surprise. “You took the job because—because you thought  _ I’d _ like to come back?”

Ging scowled crossly and looked away, his ears turning pink. “Well you don’t have to  _ say _ it.”

A rush of heat to his face signaled to Kite that he was likely turning cherry red. He put his hands in his lap and looked down at them, feeling rather bashful. “… Thank you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Ging grumbled, waving his hand dismissively. His grumpy tone was belied by the subtle flush on his face. “Just look at the trees and think about how much you like animals or whatever. You could think about jobs relating to wildlife photography or ecological surveys, if that’s something that sounds appealing. Nature Hunters are common enough. They’re pretty focused on studying climate and staking out viable places to build cities in, though…”

His hand went back behind his head and Ging closed his eyes, falling silent though his drawn-down eyebrows indicated he was still thinking hard. A warm blush of contentment spread through Kite’s chest at how likely it was Ging was brainstorming what kinds of jobs would suit Kite. The future seemed a little bit less harrowing to consider if he had Ging’s input on what to do with himself. Following Ging’s instructions was, after all, what he’d been doing since he got off the streets. He could survive, of course. But as the Grand Willows bowed and sang in the wind again, Kite held his hat down to ensure it wouldn’t be blown away and thought that he didn’t particularly want to survive in a world without Ging.

He couldn’t burden Ging with his presence forever. Given how quickly Ging bored of the plethora of subjects Kite had seen him engage enthusiastically with at first, he would be lucky to get another year. Less, if he couldn’t measure up to the next challenger, and in that case he wouldn’t even be around to regret losing his place as Ging’s student. In time, he would have to take his leave before overstaying his welcome meant straining the limits of Ging’s fondness for him. For now, he could only strive to be as interesting as possible.

For now, he thought, he could sit by Ging’s side and admire the beauty of the world. He could be happy with this. He could prove he was worthy of this happiness.


	5. Only the Living Know Victory

No good, Kite thought, curled up into a ball on his side. This was no good. Exhaustion was dragging down his bones; gravity itself felt like an inexorable force. His bedroll, though now getting old, was still comfortable and warm enough that he should have been able to sleep. He needed to be able to sleep, even lightly, to keep up the grueling pace he’d been driving himself at for…

Nine months, maybe? It was hard to remember. It was hard to think when he was so tired.

Once more he closed his eyes and tried to relax, tried to give in to the sweet pull of unconsciousness.

Sprawled out beside Kite, his limbs dangling off the edge of his bedroll, Ging shifted in his sleep.

Once more Kite jerked awake, watching him roll on his side, heartbeat pounding in his ears.

No good at all. He couldn’t afford to deprive himself of sleep double-checking that every minor movement Ging made wasn’t a sign that he was sneaking away in the night. There was no reason for Ging to do something like that. He wouldn’t have been able to gather up his pack and bedroll without Kite noticing anything, even considering how stealthy Ging could be. If Kite could make himself wake up every time Ging so much as scratched his nose, he’d be able to tell if all of Ging’s travel gear suddenly vanished.

Ging sighed, caught in the throes of some dream.

The silver lining was that once exhaustion managed to finally overcome anxiety, he was usually too tired to dream at all.

 

\--

 

The third was named Serena Thompson and she came as a set with the fourth, her twin sister Patricia Thompson.

“I know I said I wasn’t going to take more than one student,” Ging told him beforehand, “but they’re a special case, since—well, I can’t really say. It’ll be obvious enough.”

He could have pressed for more details, but in all honestly Kite didn’t really care. He couldn’t afford to care about them, even if they might stand out from his other two opponents. It was safer to think of them as merely another obstacle to be overcome. The days following his battle with Yu Jianjun had in one sense been easier than those following that with Turner Firmamentum, though still harrowing, because at least he hadn’t  _ liked _ Jianjun. Turner had been abrasive, and blunt, and uncompromising at the worst of times, but it wasn’t as if those weren’t all traits that could also be attributed to Ging.

Turner had had the decency to look unhappy at the prospect of fighting him, but Jianjun had just smiled and laughed like nothing was wrong and it tore at Kite’s nerves because he should have felt the same way. It shouldn’t matter if they were people with their own dreams and ambitions and accomplishments. He had to protect his own, and he couldn’t regret doing so.

He had to stop thinking of them as people and think of them as obstacles, something in his way to be rid of. It was different from how he had been treated as a child, stray vermin on the street to be exterminated; all of his opponents had known what they were getting into and agreed to take part. They’d had a choice he never had, and so if they paid for their decision with their lives that was their own doing. Some things were worth dying for. Some things were worth killing for. Doing what he had to do in order to win just meant he was doing his duty as a Hunter and respecting their determination. Treating another person like a thing was just what warriors had to do. It didn’t make them bad people.

That would make Ging a bad person, as well, which couldn’t possibly be true.

   
 

 

The sisters stood at about five and a half feet with identical long brown hair and skirts over tight leggings. For all his mental preparation to be detached, Kite could admire their fashion sense. Skirts were really very nice, but he’d never gotten the hang of fighting in one.

They stayed close to one another throughout the introductions, their arms linked. “I like your hair,” Patricia commented to him offhandedly as Ging stepped away to take refuge in the upper branches of one of the pine trees surrounding them, indicating the veritable waterfall of white hair reaching almost all the way down his back.

Kite blinked, taken aback, and swore vehemently in the back of his mind as the guilt chewing away at his nerves reared its ugly head again. Of course, they had to be  _ nice _ . If he survived, he’d have a hell of a hard time getting to sleep. He tripped over himself replying, his instinct to be polite (honed over several years cleaning up after Ging’s grumpy messes) warring with his hours of making himself not care about them. “Thank you. I grew it myself.”

She hid a laugh behind her hand and he felt his face heat up. Tugging the brim of his hat down slightly, he muttered “I’m impressed you both manage to fight in skirts.”

“The leggings help,” Serena cut in. “… Do you want to know where we got them from?”

So much for being detached.

   
 

 

As his foot hit the ground on his tenth step Crazy Slots coalesced in a cloud of smoke over his upraised palm, its reel clicking.

“Wow,” it said. “This situation is a whole new level of shitty. You actually managed to double the amount of shit you were in. I’m impressed.”

“You’re annoying, is what you are,” Kite muttered. Behind them, a slapping sound indicated that of all things, the sisters were high-fiving. “Roll.”

“Coming up!”

Seven; Capriccio Lam. The clown warped, its face and hat expanding sideways until from the tips of its fingers upward was a long, thick blade without a hilt, a plain wedge. Along its length it was divided into segments, rhombuses of decreasing size until the tip was an acute, sharp triangle. As usual, Crazy Slots’ feet had extended to become the grip that settled into Kite’s hand just in time for him to bring up the weapon and block Serena’s opening attack.

Like him, they had wasted no time; the moment her open-palm strike hit the flat side of the sword its weight increased, dragging his arm down and opening up his guard for Patricia’s follow-up jump kick to nail him directly in the side of the head and send him careening into a tree trunk.

_ Ryu _ was enough to keep the impact against the wood from doing any damage, but it was nonetheless disorienting. Once he had both his feet back under him Kite shifted into a defensive position keeping the tree at his back, watching the two women warily. Dealing with experienced fighters like Turner and Jianjun had been difficult enough without there being two of them. But from what Ging had let on, it was likely that their  _ Hatsu _ s were connected in some way that would feature prominently in their fighting style.

Serena’s was fairly clear; he already knew that what she touched with her open hand would become heavier. Capriccio Lam hadn’t seemed to double in weight—if he had to guess, he would say that half its weight was added to it. It was an ability that would spell trouble if it was allowed to stack up on itself, then. Factors he didn’t know yet were whether it was restricted to only one hand, whether it had to be an open hand, and whether there was another aspect of it that would capitalize upon the enemy’s decreased speed. Patricia’s  _ Hatsu _ was sure to be something related to weight, if his suspicions were correct. It would probably take the same form as her sister’s.

They had fanned out to either side of him so that he couldn’t quite keep them both in his line of sight at once, edging forward little by little. Not a shocking strategy, since it was both classic and effective.

Patricia, he decided. If he could prevent her from using her  _ Hatsu _ in the first place, it would be quite a bit simpler to deal with Serena. He dragged himself back into the cold, distant place he always ended up in when fighting a human person.

The tree trunk may as well have been butter with how easily Capriccio Lam cut through it, a diagonal line that severed the wood entirely and sent the tree toppling down toward Serena’s head. She dived out of the way and in the opening Kite’s arm jerked straight forward, snapping the segments of the sword outward so that a metal chain welded through a hole inside of it slid free and allowed the sharp blade pieces to be used as a whip. Said whip intercepted Patricia’s trajectory toward him and scored a deep gash across her left arm before she managed to avoid it.

Capriccio Lam wasn’t nearly so strenuous as Reel Barrage, but it was still a drain on his  _ Nen _ capacity to use Manipulation techniques. The tiring nature of the intense concentration it took to control the path of the heavy whip was mitigated slightly by how the weapon could just as easily be used as a plain sword, a form it had to return to after every outward lash.

The segments of the sword clicked together in sequence and Patricia barreled forward in its wake, closing in before he could extend Capriccio Lam again. Her eyes were held wide open, tracking every movement his right arm made. Behind him, Serena was hanging back out of her sister’s way. Being between them was far too much to his disadvantage; as the tip piece of the sword retracted fully, Kite’s arm moved with the backwards momentum to thrust the sword out blindly behind him. Serena avoided it easily, but the tip pierced the trunk of a tree behind her and when the sword retracted again Kite was dragged along with it, Patricia’s open hand catching the ends of his hair.

It was only because he was used to compensating for its weight on his neck that Kite noticed how light it had suddenly become. They were opposites, then—Patricia made things lighter, Serena made them heavier.  _ Gyo _ confirmed that Serena’s  _ Nen _ was permeating Capriccio Lam, radiating out through it from where her hand had initially touched it. A Transmutation skill? Transmuters usually turned their aura into a kind of energy or kept it in close to themselves, but it was conceivable. Emission would be much easier for a Transmuter to learn than a Conjurer, so if he could do it they definitely could.

The only questions remaining, he thought as Capriccio Lam returned to guard position, were whether this was the whole of their  _ Hatsu _ s and how they used it to lethal effect.

The second question was answered quickly as Patricia patted Serena lightly twice on the shoulder. At a quarter of her weight while retaining all of her muscle power, Serena could leap twenty feet into the air; staring down at him as Patricia darted forward to cut off his retreat, Serena punched her own palm ten times in rapid succession then clenched her hands together, bringing them up over her head.

Patricia was quick, likely because she’d halved her own weight, but Kite was used to reading the subtlest flow of  _ Nen _ to predict his opponent. Ging’s  _ Nen _ control was nothing short of perfect, making it near impossible to follow his  _ Ryu _ . Patricia’s was a neon light show in comparison—a fact that didn’t help him much as he could only barely keep up with her physically and she herded him to where her sister was falling.

Serena’s oncoming fists hit his left shoulder and Kite’s knees buckled. Her increased weight, fifteen times what it was normally if his rapid calculations were correct, made the ground beneath his feet crack as the force of her descent was channeled through him; the scar tissue that had built up after his injury during Jianjun’s fight cracked distressingly and Kite swore loudly as his left arm spasmed. It could only move shakily, his shoulder protesting in pain, and his heart stopped for a second in horror. There was a split-second interval where Serena was crouched on the ground beside him, her own weight rendering her immobile, and if he could bring Capriccio Lam around before Patricia got there then he could take her out and move on to Patricia, but—

Serena’s  _ Hatsu _ cut out on its own, lightening both her and the weapon clenched in his hand, allowing both sisters to retreat in the space of time it took for him to gather himself and ascertain that his left arm was still useable, if exceptionally pained.

Enhancing his own muscles to speed up to match them would be too taxing combined with the Manipulation needed to control Capriccio Lam. Since he’d used it already he could just dismiss it and call another, but there was no guarantee that the situation would be any better. Capriccio Lam when weighted down gained extra momentum in its arcing attacks, and when lightened would be faster. Since it had returned to normal, there was no immediate need to exchange it. Getting Reel Barrage or Dual Blow Aria would only make matters worse for him, a chance he wasn’t willing to take.

The sisters moved in perfect harmony, driving him into each other’s fists, and each time he took a blow he became more certain that the best chance he had was directly after their attack when Serena was, for a fraction of a second, vulnerable. With her gone, Patricia would have essentially no way to attack. The other way around, Serena would be too slowed by her own weight to attack effectively. More than once, as his  _ Ryu _ grew increasingly weaker under the stress, Capriccio Lam was just nearly in the right place, but—

It would take such a huge amount of love and trust for someone to make their own  _ Hatsu _ useless without the help of another person.

The eighth time they attacked, once more hitting his left shoulder and definitively rendering it unusable, Serena ended up in front of him and Patricia by his left side. The impact of Serena’s landing sent him stumbling back, and in that instant he both saw what he needed to do and, without thinking, did it.

When his right foot hit the ground his weight immediately pivoted around it; his right arm extended up, holding the sword above his head in a backwards grip, and stabbed forward, the tip of Capriccio Lam pointed down at an angle toward Serena’s heart. She was low to the ground, in the only place that would allow his plan to work. By her side, Patricia saw him move and—

Anyone who loved their sibling so dearly would leap in front of a deadly attack, that much was obvious. All it took then was the correct positioning and a raw burst of power that would let the sword pierce through Patricia’s  _ Ryu _ and her body, her noble sacrifice rendered moot as Capriccio Lam found its mark and impaled Serena alongside her sister.

Crazy Slots was dismissed in a whirl of smoke before the blade could retract and drag the corpses closer to him. They collapsed, Patricia’s body falling back onto Serena’s with its arms splayed out in a wretched mockery of the protection she’d tried to give.

Kite had never felt quite so disgusted with himself.

 

\--

 

“You could have finished that sooner,” Ging said, his tone indicating it as more of an observation than a critique. “There were openings on both of them you could have taken advantage of, and their abilities would have been much less difficult to deal with if one of them were gone.”

“Yes,” Kite agreed, stretching his right arm out over his head. The left dangled uselessly—it would need a sling again. He’d be sore no matter what, but he could mitigate it at least a little bit. The real physical ache came from the drain on his  _ Nen _ , always much worse after he’d used one of his three worst categories. All his limbs, all his bones felt heavy. He wanted to lie down and rest, but there was no time and from past experience he knew he had to keep moving. Stopping would let his thoughts catch up to him.

“Why didn’t you?”

Kite let his arm fall to his side and closed his eyes for a second. Now that the commotion was over, birds and small animals were returning to the clearing. A raccoon nosed interestedly at the blood-soaked soil near the freshly turned dirt of a dual grave.

“They loved each other. It would have been horrible for one to watch the other die.”

Ging hummed thoughtfully. The shovel clattered loudly as it was tossed into the trunk of the car. “So you put yourself in greater danger for the sake of your enemy’s wellbeing?”

“I wouldn’t have waited if I thought it would make a significant difference.”

“It’s true that you had an edge in strength of  _ Nen _ and fighting experience, and that coordinating two people’s actions wordlessly in the middle of a fight is much harder than just fighting on your own. But it’s unlike you to leave something to chance.”

“Having a  _ Hatsu _ that’s nothing  _ but _ chance turned me off from it, I suppose,” Kite said, smiling wanly. “I know it was a bad idea. But I judged that I was strong enough to handle them both until I could end it properly.”

“In one blow, you mean,” Ging said. He regarded Kite thoughtfully, rubbing his hand along the stubble on his chin. “And that turned out to be the case, so I’m not going to say you were wrong. But there was a significant risk involved.”

“I know.”

“And no enemy would show you the same consideration.”

“… One might,” Kite said quietly, turning and kneeling to stretch out his legs.

“That’s a chance you’re willing to take?”

“No. Not really.”

He paused, his fingers wrapped around his outstretched foot, when Ging’s hand pressed against the top of his head. “You did a good job, Kite. I’m not saying you didn’t. But if you’re going to do something like that, you have to be sure you feel strongly enough about it to put your life on the line.”

“Thank you, master,” he collected his legs back under himself and stood with Ging’s hand still on his head, Ging’s wrist bending to accommodate the brim of his hat. “If at all possible, I prefer to end a fight cleanly. I said, when we met, that I would kill anything if you deemed it necessary, and that’s still true. But painful deaths are always… unpleasant, and…”

He trailed off when he realized Ging was squinting at him in a displeased way. “What?” he asked, his heart dropping into his stomach and making him nauseous as the briefly-settled adrenaline kicked up again. “Did I—did I say something—?”

“Huh? No,” Ging said abruptly, totally failing to be reassuring. His hand dropped to Kite’s shoulder and he patted it once. “You’re fine. Let’s get going.”

Kite stayed where he was for a second, blinking in utter confusion and replaying everything he’d said in his head trying to find where he’d gone wrong. He couldn’t think how anything he’d said would upset Ging, though if there was truly a serious problem Ging definitely wouldn’t hesitate to let him know about it. What had made Ging look up at him with such a disconcerting expression, then, was mysterious—

…

There was still a heavy ache in Kite’s bones as he wearily recalled that Ging didn’t like being reminded that Kite had outgrown him. And he never enjoyed talking about Kite’s close-won victories beyond what little advice he bothered to give.

 

\--

 

Kite blinked and looked up from the published ecology journal he’d been aimlessly skimming to the glass Ging had plonked down on the table in front of him.

“My grandma’s recipe,” Ging said, crossing his arms and smirking down on him. “A sleep remedy.”

The glass was full nearly to the brim with an opaque liquid, what looked like milk with several other, mysterious substances added. Kite was pretty sure he recognized chamomile leaves. He put aside his book for the moment and picked it up with his right hand, his left arm confined to a sling. He sniffed it gingerly; it didn’t smell appetizing in the slightest, which wasn’t surprising.

“Um. It’s very nice, Ging,” he said, looking up. “What is it for, exactly?”

Ging opened his mouth to reply, then visibly hesitated and moved to sit down across from Kite. Kite straightened, tensing with trepidation. Good things rarely, if ever, came of Ging dropping his grumpy exterior.

“I know you’ve been having a shitload of trouble sleeping,” Ging said bluntly. Kite’s stomach twisted with embarrassed guilt and he dropped his gaze to the glass. “It wasn’t really subtle, to be honest. And I waited to see if you would get over it yourself, but, well, after a fight like that I figured it was best to step in.”

“Oh,” Kite said faintly. “Thank you. I had been thinking it would probably be a sleepless night.” It was difficult to admit it, but since Ging already knew there was no point in acting like it wasn’t happening. He should’ve known better than to think he could hide anything from Ging. He raised the glass up to his eyes again and tried to make out the contents. Milk, chamomile… kava? Where in the world had Ging picked up kava leaves?

“I drank it a lot as a kid,” Ging told him, leaning forward on his elbows and grinning. “It put me out like a light. I’m pretty sure my grandma drugged it, actually.”

He laughed and Kite eased into a relaxed smile. A drink from Ging’s childhood was unlikely to be the prop for some kind of training. It was sort of touching, actually, being able to hold something in his hands that Ging obviously thought fondly about.

“Thank you,” he said again, allowing himself a small hope that he’d manage to stay asleep for once. “I’m sure it’ll help, master, and it…”

He paused and glanced away, keeping his awkward sentiments short. “It means a lot to me regardless.”

Ging stayed silent as Kite tentatively pressed the glass to his lips, tipping it back slightly to get some of the drink in his mouth and—

Nearly gagged on the thick, overly sweet taste. It was disconcertingly pulpy, chunks of shredded leaves mixed in with some kind of sugar. An attempt to disguise the bitterness of the leaves, he guessed, though it didn’t work. Definitely something he could see coming out of the herbal recipes of a small, secluded island. Ging slammed his hand on the table and laughed uproariously as Kite spluttered and fought to keep his face straight as it went down his throat.

“Yeah, tasted like shit back then too,” he said between snickers.

   
 

 

Kite did not so much fall asleep as collapse into sleep, an inexorable pull that managed to resist his anxious anticipation of night terrors. It was almost alarming, how intensely tired he had suddenly become. Something in Ging’s childhood drink had worked, evidently, and mercifully let him sleep dreamlessly.

“S’rry, master,” he’d muttered before succumbing, sprawled ungracefully on the nearest non-wooden surface, the couch provided to their suite that was far too small to hold all of his legs. His feet dangled off the end.

“It’s alright, Kite,” Ging said, and Kite vaguely wished he was more awake to appreciate the rare soothing note in his voice. “Get some rest. You earned it.”

Whatever the cause, Kite slept longer and more deeply than he ever remembered doing. He’d always been a light sleeper and an early riser, a product of the constant danger he’d grown up in, and that had proven itself useful during his years of training. On this occasion, however, he woke groggily to realize that at some point he’d been moved to his bed and that the clock was rapidly approaching noon. He’d somehow managed to sleep through his bandages being changed and his left arm, though throbbing at the shoulder, was still safely tucked in its sling.

“Morning, sunshine,” Ging greeted him when he stumbled into the main room, regarding Kite’s tangled hair and bleary expression with a lopsided grin on his face. He was sitting on a chair with his legs thrown over one armrest, a half-eaten apple in one hand and Kite’s journal in the other. “A bunch of this stuff’s out of date. Why’d you pick this thing up, anyway?”

“Uh,” Kite said intelligently, pressing his right hand to his face and trying to wipe the sleep from his eyes. It didn’t work. “It was because… uh, I got it three days ago, right…? Something about the author. I’m sorry, I don’t… I don’t remember…”

Ging hummed and didn’t push the question, leaning back to watch Kite make his way to the kitchenette. Neither of them had ever relied on coffee to wake up, but for the first time Kite squinted at the machine and tried to figure out where the little packets went.

“Sleep well?” Ging asked lightly.

“Too much,” Kite mumbled, pressing his hand to his face again. He abandoned the coffee machine, shoving it away on the countertop so he could lean on the ledge. “Ugh, your grandma should make that drink into a brand, it’s really effective. I can’t believe I’m still so tired, it’s like I’m thinking through molasses.”

“What does that even mean?”

“Whatever you want it to mean.”

The ecology journal was tossed onto the ottoman and Ging hopped up onto his feet, striding over to press his hand to Kite’s forehead.

“Do you think you’re sick? Our schedule’s flexible, we can take a few days if you’ll be down and out for a while.”

“No, I’m fine,” Kite reassured him, putting on the best wakeful smile he could manage. The effect was spoiled as he had to fight back a yawn. “I’ll be fine tomorrow, I mean, there’s no need to trouble anyone about it.”

“If you say so,” Ging said with a shrug.

 

\--

 

It was easy, after so long, for Kite to keep quiet as Ging carefully manipulated his shoulder. Having been broken twice there was a greater chance that it would heal badly, but he'd monitored it carefully and after two months his arm could, with some small twinges, be lifted above his shoulder.

"Seems fine," Ging declared, letting go. Kite let his arm drop back down to his side, slowly exhaling until the tremors in his upper arm smoothed themselves out. "You can use it normally?"

"Yes," Kite answered, rolling his shoulder. There were mild aches, but nothing he wasn't used to ignoring.

"Good, then we can get it back up to snuff. Two months slacking off seems long enough, doesn't it?"

"Sure," Kite answered mildly. He hadn't felt like he'd been slacking off, but that was probably just the result of uneasy sleep and the resulting fatigue. At one point a dog's bark had snapped him into awareness just as Patricia's body collapsed backwards and for a horrible moment the memories converged, phantom dogs slavering over the sisters; Kite had nearly screamed that he'd already done enough to them, their bodies at least should have a façade of peace. But since even before he’d met Ging he’d been good at staying quiet and still.

That had been at two in the morning and the gruesome tableau had been splattered behind his eyelids every time he'd tried to sleep, so if the following day he'd been slacking off he wasn't surprised to hear it. He could at least reassure himself that he was still alive, he could curl up sideways on his bedroll and watch Ging's chest regularly rise and fall. It was a sort of creepy thing to do, and Kite felt uncomfortably guilty doing it, but it served to keep the dogs at bay. He was still here, still here. Kite had managed to prove himself worthy of this happiness, and he was happy. He would be happy despite the old ghosts clinging like irons to his feet. He would keep moving forward.

It wasn't all sleeplessness and biting guilt. It truly was fun to go on adventures and uncover long-dead cities. All their companions looked so happy when the buildings were restored, when the stone weathered by time was made good as new again. Everything Ging did made people's lives better. Kite was certainly much better off than he'd been five years ago. He knew how to endure pain until he could grasp happiness for a while again.

"Just in time, too," Ging said in the present.

Kite’s arm had already been still, hanging motionless in the air, and as he came back to himself he lowered it. "Oh," he said.

Ging glanced at him, as unreadable as ever. "Not right now, but a couple weeks out."

"What's their name?" Kite asked.

"Brandy Willows," Ging told him.

"I see."

"She's a two-star Hunter. Stronger than the others have been."

Kite closed his eyes for a second, tilting his head down so that the brim of his hat would cover his face. The shooting pains from his shoulder were making him feel ill. A traitorous part of his heart whispered something dangerously close to  _ Please don't do this again _ .

Hunters didn't beg. Street rats and gutter muck begged. Ging wouldn't throw him into a fight he couldn't win; he believed that. If Ging truly didn't want to put up with having a student dragging him down anymore, he wouldn't have been so theatrical about it.

Kite managed to smile at the thought and looked up again. "Well, then I really had better get back into shape, hadn't I?"

Ging grinned and Kite made a wordless, offended sound as his hat was jostled under Ging's hand. "Right you are."

 

\--

 

The arena Brandy Willows chose was a desolate, open plain.

Even the empty hillside that Turner had met his fate on had been littered with boulders and uneven stone. A terrain with obstacles offered both a challenge and a reprieve; both fighters had to work around the environment, but a boulder could be used as a shield just as easily as it could be picked up and thrown as a weapon. Having nothing but flat wasteland to work with meant that they had to rely solely upon their own abilities to protect themselves.

Her  _ Hatsu _ probably also worked best in an open space, Kite thought to himself, shaking her hand. Evasiveness would be the best tactic. Hopefully he wouldn’t draw Silent Waltz or Dual Blow Aria.

His feet carried him ten steps away; on the sixth, he vaguely realized he couldn’t remember much of the conversation that had just happened. It would have bothered him more if it wasn’t the case that either he or she would be dead within the next ten minutes. And he had plenty of ghosts to keep him company already; if hers didn’t linger it would only be a good thing.

“Snap out of it, shithead,” Crazy Slots clicked at him, its reel clattering in its mouth. “You listening?? Get your head back on your shoulders!!”

Brandy’s fist slammed into it before it could say anything else or even begin spinning; Crazy Slots shattered into jagged pieces with a wordless, offended shout before dispersing into smoke. It took more will than it should have to pull his body’s strings, dance around Brandy’s stream of attacks. She kept on his heels, and the vast emptiness of their surroundings meant that while he had plenty of room to maneuver, there wasn’t anywhere for him to go that would change the situation.

It was beyond strange to be so sparsely connected to his body when he was also utterly hyperaware of every sensation it processed. He knew exactly what every muscle in his body was capable of, how hard he could push himself. Lactic acid was already making them burn, but it was a dull sensation and he could ignore it safely for quite a while longer. There was a moderate give to the dirt beneath his feet, not enough to slip on but enough that kicking off of it would require more effort than it would on stone. Every bead of sweat on Brandy’s russet skin, every tiny shift of her  _ Ryu _ he could track.

They fell into a sort of rhythm, Brandy striking out three times for every blow that barely missed landing on her. She was fast and certainly more powerful than his previous opponents had been. Every tiny opening he had to summon Crazy Slots, she rapidly closed and smashed the clown to pieces again.

She didn’t let up until she’d landed a hit on his chest and right arm, at which point she suddenly retreated and caught her breath. Kite’s  _ Nen _ instinctively flared up into  _ Gyo _ , and sure enough nodules of her Nen were stuck where she’d managed to touch him. They didn’t seem to be doing anything, but obviously they were part of a condition for her  _ Hatsu _ .

Kite heard curses spilling out of his mouth, and maybe that was why when Crazy Slots appeared in his hand it didn’t bother saying anything before launching into its spin. Brandy darted forward again, but before she could break it the clown sang “Eight!”

“Fuck,” Kite said fervently.

Crazy Slots’ face shuddered, then warped as an identical replica of it pulled off of it and slid around to settle on the clown’s back side. With both faces settled facing opposite directions, the middle part of it expanded like a balloon until the weapon molded itself into a cylinder, one face on each flat side and their mouths sinking into gaping black holes. A lengthy handle spiraled down into Kite’s hand and as Brandy came into range he brought the warhammer down.

Dual Blow Aria crashed into the ground where she would have been a moment later if she hadn’t dexterously changed course, sinking into the dirt with a shockwave that created a deep crater. Brandy’s eyes widened and she cartwheeled backwards, gaining some distance and watching Crazy Slots warily.

The tired burning in Kite’s arms intensified as they hefted Dual Blow Aria up into the air again. It was strong, but slow and heavy. Exactly what he didn’t want when she had all the room she needed to dodge.

Brandy evidently came to the same conclusion, not even bothering to hide the coalescing of  _ Nen _ around her legs. As she moved forward again she became a blur, circling him with quick feints forward. She had already marked his front and right for something, so it would make sense for her to aim for his back and left next. As such, Dual Blow Aria remained poised even when she came close enough that he could have reached out and touched her with his right hand. She had a knife, but no other weapons; calling her bluff wasn’t much of a risk. Kite’s body wasn’t strong on its own, but he’d been building up his  _ Nen _ capacity for years. He could Enhance his defenses enough to withstand an attack if it came.

At last she made to hit his back and, in the same second that her fingers pressed against his shirt and her Nen stuck there, the face on Dual Blow Aria that was directed away from her exhaled in a rapid blast of air that swung the warhammer toward her head and spun Kite around to face her. Her mouth opened in a silent gasp and, just as before, she managed to dodge the attack by an inch.

The second blast of air, coming from the second face that was buried in the ground, caught her off guard as a small shift of Kite’s grip tilted the hammer enough that the explosion spun the hammer diagonally in a circular arc, up over Kite’s shoulder so that for a moment he was clinging to it with one hand, his whole body twisting to keep up as it acted as Dual Blow Aria’s fulcrum.

This time the hammer slammed into Brandy’s side and sent her crashing down to the ground, bouncing with the force and skidding to a halt yards away with her right arm bent where it wasn’t supposed to bend.

He could see her jaw clenching as she swallowed the pain. It would be two minutes before Dual Blow Aria could use its sequence of blasts again, but she didn’t know that—she’d be wary for at least a few seconds as she reassessed. He could swing the hammer around with his own power, but in an empty plain it would be particularly difficult to land an effective attack.

His shoulders tensed as Dual Blow Aria was dismissed, his hand cutting through the smoke and Crazy Slots’ base form immediately curling into existence again. Brandy’s brow drew down, but he was ready for her dive forward and with a backwards flip his feet touched down to the ground a safe distance away.

“This’s a first,” Crazy Slots commented. “Lady, be proud! You’re the first person to get to see two of me in one fight!!”

Brady actually stopped moving, her eyebrows shooting up. “It  _ talks _ ?” she asked, dumbfounded.

“That’s right,” the clown preened, spinning in the air. “And that’s not all I can do, if this bastard manages to use me right.”

“Enough,” Kite muttered, and Crazy Slots trilled until it landed on two. Just his luck.

Silent Waltz was at least a more agile weapon than Dual Blow Aria, though it was still less useful than Capriccio Lam or Prima Cadenza would have been. This was especially true now that Brandy was aware that his weapons had unique abilities of their own. He would have to make do, as he always did.

In a flurry of attacks and evasions they moved around the craters in the ground, both agile enough to avoid taking more than superficial hits. Brandy’s singular hand, her right arm definitively out of commission, never came close to his left side; more than once Silent Waltz’s curved blade slid around her back and nearly tasted blood, but each time she bent around it like untouchable water.

It took until Kite’s arms were burning in earnest for Brandy to flip gracefully over Silent Waltz’s wide attack, her left hand resting for a moment on the upper arm of his left side. She used the handhold to bend herself around until her feet rested on his back. When she pushed off, sending him stumbling forward, Kite had an ominous sense that he had been here before, in a different position. Front and back, left and right, the little balls of her  _ Nen _ pulsated. He spun around to face her, bringing Silent Waltz to bear—whatever her  _ Hatsu _ was he could withstand it,  _ had _ to withstand it—

Brandy had an unexpectedly mournful expression as she lifted her hand and pointed at him.

“Sorry, kid,” she said quietly. “I’ll make it fast.”

The only reason Kite knew what was happening was because he already had  _ Gyo _ active. The bubbles of her  _ Nen _ exploded into ropes that wound around his chest, binding his upper arms to his sides so suddenly that Silent Waltz slipped out of his fingers and crashed to the ground. The bindings constricted, forcing the air out of his lungs. Silent Waltz vanished into smoke as Kite desperately focused every last iota of his  _ Nen _ into reinforcing his heart and spine’s durability as first his humerus on both sides broke, then his ribs, then his sternum. Pain splintered through his chest and as he tried to breathe in he realized that his lungs didn’t have enough room to expand.

Somehow, he kept his feet. Brandy was only a blurry shape in the distance as his vision tunneled, turning black, but he still watched her as his body convulsed for air. Blood ran down his chin and stained his shirt, which was rapidly turning from white to red as Brandy’s  _ Nen _ binding tightened further and his broken ribs came out his skin. If nothing changed he could keep his heart from being pierced, but as Brandy moved light glinted off of a metal shape in her hand. Kite recognized death imminent and a savage determination flowered side-by-side with the overwhelming terror in his soul.

Like  _ hell _ he’d die here.

Brandy’s face came into focus as she reached out, grabbing his shirt in her free hand and pulling him forward as she pivoted to drive the knife into his stomach. The extra pain barely even registered in his mind as time slowed to a crawl. In one eternal instant Kite distantly noted how the knife came out his back, grating against the bone of his spine; she must have been aiming for it. She should have gone for the throat, or the heart. Less chance of missing. But as their eyes met, too briefly even for the muscles in their faces to move, he recognized a familiar hesitation in her.

_ Too kind _ , he thought, not without bitterness.

Kite used the force of her pull with his own involuntary doubling-over to bring his forehead down against hers.

He saw her eyes widen even as he closed his, letting go of his heart to focus on reinforcing his head with  _ Ko _ . The binding weakened as she did the same, but the millisecond between their reactions decided it. The wet, viscous heat covered his face from his forehead to his nose as her skull caved in. As her body crumpled to the ground their heads separated and the squelch of flesh pulling apart embedded itself in his mind.

As he fell to his knees the constriction around his lungs lessened, then completely disappeared as Brandy’s  _ Nen _ dispersed—his lungs expanded desperately into his shattered ribs, pain tearing through every cell of his chest. A wet sucking noise ripped its way out of his throat as his muscles spasmed, blood accompanying every labored breath; the last untainted places on his chin and shirt were stained deep red before long. Even when detached from the agony of his body he could feel it, wet and sticky against his skin. It dripped down his face more slowly than the gobs of  _ something _ smeared across his forehead.

As Kite fought to breathe past the stench and taste of blood, past the fluid filling his pierced lungs, he registered a brush of fingers against his cheek and his head jerked away, certainty filling him for a horrid moment that Brandy hadn’t died with that last blow. He didn’t even have enough air to make a pained noise when moving pulled at his torn muscle and bone. His arms were dead weights at his sides. His body couldn’t even get to its feet, let alone keep fighting.

But beyond his own ragged gasping he recognized a gentle murmur of “Kite,” and when the hand pressed against his face again he recognized Ging’s calloused palm.

He had won, then.

The relief made his eyes burn, and when Ging began carefully picking shards of bone out of his hair Kite’s body relaxed incrementally. His fluttering heartbeat was slowing down. With each uncertain breath it got easier. Or no, he thought vaguely, just less painful. It was getting hard to feel anything at all, actually, even distantly.

There was a curious lack of urgency to the thought. It trod slowly through his mind as Ging upended the water bottle on his face, washing away a fair bit of the blood so that Kite’s eyes could open again. Brandy’s body was lying not five feet away. Her face was gone. Kite blinked twice, met Ging’s worried gaze, and stopped breathing.  
 

 

 

Waking up was a strange experience, since he didn’t remember closing his eyes or fainting. He could almost pretend he was back recovering from his fight with Jianjun, his cheek pressed against Ging’s shoulder. It was almost as soaked with blood as Kite’s shirt. He must have been coughing on it for a while. When he tilted his head up enough to see Ging’s face he noticed the world blurring by, too quickly to make out definite shapes even if he’d been able to try. Ging’s hair was pressed back, nearly horizontal in the wind. Kite tried to make a sound and realized that he wasn’t controlling his own breathing.

It took a long second for him to find his  _ Nen _ sense, but once he had he twitched involuntarily under the sheer force of Ging’s aura. He could feel it in his lungs, forcing them to expand and contract, rooting him in the physical world. Each breath in sent a new surge of agony through his body as Ging dragged the oxygen through his veins.

_ Incredible _ , Kite mused vaguely, watching Ging’s own quick breathing as he sprinted across rooftops.  _ Some variation of _ Shu.  _ He must have come up with that on the spot _ . It must take an extraordinary amount of precision. If he’d had the energy to feel anything but the old terror as his life ebbed away he would’ve been pleased.  _ Nen _ inevitably carried the user’s emotion within it. The all-encompassing blanket of aura around him, inside him, thrummed with an indomitable will. Ging wanted him to survive. As Kite’s eyes slid closed again he caught part of the stream of words Ging was muttering under his breath.

“—not gonna die, you’re not gonna die, I won’t  _ let _ you, dammit, if I have to keep your heart beating with my bare hands I  _ will _ , you hear me?? You hear me, Kite?!? You’re not  _ allowed _ to die, come on, come on—”

_ No _ , Kite thought deliriously.  _ Hunters don’t die. Don’t die, don’t die. You trained a Hunter. Hunters don’t die. I can’t die, I’m a Hunter. A Hunter is what I am. If not a Hunter, then what. If not a Hunter, then nothing, nothing, nothing _ .

He dimly heard Ging swearing vehemently, his breath hitching and his grip on Kite tightening. The  _ Nen _ in Kite’s lungs roiled with some intense emotion. He was dimly surprised to recognize that it was similar to fear. He hadn’t thought Ging was capable.

The pain of breathing was drawing him inevitably back down into the horrible peace of unconsciousness and he hoped finally that Ging could read the sentiment in his  _ Nen _ , even abstractly, so that he would know, so that it would matter to just one person after Kite had ceased to be that he had lived and wanted to live.

_ Without you I am nothing, nothing, nothing. _


	6. The Hand that Feeds You

He still wasn’t breathing on his own.

… He wasn’t even breathing through his mouth or nose…?

As the world blurrily reformed around him Kite lifted a hand to his throat to feel whatever it was breathing for him. Or made the attempt, at least—pain lanced through his upper arm as he tried to move it. Something was keeping it in place, partially bent so that his hand lay below his stomach. The other arm was the same, he quickly gathered, and he could barely make his fingers twitch. The only part of his body that felt like it could move at all was his legs, and even those were heavy.

Kite opened his mouth, but the thing at the base of his throat didn’t let any air move past itself so it was useless to try and speak. All he could do was blink up at the ceiling, growing steadily more frustrated. He took stock as best he could—he was in loose-fitting clothes and laying in a bed, that much was clear. His face was clean, which he was sorely thankful for, and his hair had probably been washed enough to get the blood and—to get the blood out. The position his arms were in made it likely that they were in casts. Trying to move one again produced the same burst of pain and didn’t even work. His eyes didn’t seem to be hurt, though there were shallow scratches along his face that he could feel when he moved his eyebrows or jaw. Every breath that was fed into his lungs was dully painful. He pressed his lips together and half-heartedly tried to sit up, not even lifting an inch off the bed before it became obvious that it was a completely and utterly terrible idea. He was truly confined, he accepted with some annoyance, but at least he was clearheaded enough to recognize that the best thing to do was wait.

A soft sliding sound came from his left and he tilted his head as much as he could—not much, thanks to the throat-thing’s tubing that lay across his chest and traveled to the right to, presumably, connect to some machine. But the person who’d entered walked carefully up to his bedside and, though it took a few seconds, he recognized that they were wearing hospital scrubs.

“Hello,” they said quietly, resting the hand that wasn’t holding a clipboard on the low railing by his arm. Their hair was a similar shade of blue as their clothes, pinned up in a tight bun so that not a single strand could escape. Kite glanced to the name sewn on their shirt and read that it was Hermione. Below that in smaller letters were the words ‘they/them’. “Do you know where you are? You can just blink once for yes and twice for no.”

Kite opened his mouth to answer instinctively, then shut it so that his teeth clicked together when he remembered. He glowered and blinked twice.

“Do you want me to tell you?” One blink. Kite could almost hear Crazy Slots saying  _ Of course, asshole, why wouldn’t I?? _

“Okay—you’re in the Brightvale Hospital. You were admitted three days ago with very severe life-threatening injuries. We’re keeping you in the intensive care unit until you’ve recovered from the necessary surgeries. Are you in pain?”

Kite paused, considering the question. He definitely was, but the medication would probably send him to sleep again. And it wasn’t anything worse than what he knew he could handle, really. He blinked twice.

Hermione looked doubtful. “Really?” Kite blinked once, meeting their eyes stubbornly. “Well, okay. If you ever are…” They reached across the bed and picked something up, holding it in Kite’s line of sight. It was a small box attached to a wire, one of its sides prominently featuring a button with an exclamation point on it. “This will summon a nurse like myself, and we can help you.”

They put the button into his right hand and Kite wrapped his stiff fingers around it. Despite his injuries it wouldn’t take much, if any, effort to press his thumb down onto it. Hermione smiled. “Right. I have a couple other questions, if you’re up for it. Yes? Okay.”

They rattled off question about how he was feeling, whether his breathing was uncomfortable or painful, if he could move his fingers and toes, et cetera. Kite answered truthfully for the most part, only fudging his blinks when he thought the correct one might put him out again. Hermione made notes on their clipboard dutifully until they reached the bottom and paused. They put the clipboard down next to Kite’s leg and looked at him seriously enough to make him slightly nervous. They kept their voice quiet and unaggressive as they asked “Do you remember how you were injured?”

… Was that all? Kite blinked once and Hermione visibly suppressed a frown. “I see. I’m sorry. We have close ties to a very good psychiatric ward nearby with experience in trauma recovery—once you’ve gotten healthy enough, we can transfer you there.”

Kite stared at them, bewildered, and emphatically blinked twice. Hermione seemed as surprised as he was at the answer. “Wh—I mean, it will be some time, you’ll be in the ICU for at least another two weeks, and that’s being generous, and then—”

The rest of their sentence was lost as a rushing filled Kite's ears and a sudden, intense need to move, to sit up, to do something overwhelmed him. Hermione yelped in alarm and their hands jerked up to hover over his shoulders as he wrenched himself into a sitting position against the violent protestations of his ribs, the ventilator tubing pulling at his throat as it stretched. 

"O-oh my god, you need to lay down, you'll reopen your stomach wound-" they said fruitlessly as Kite's heart monitor screamed. They reached toward the IV drip and Kite's face snapped toward them, staring them down as he wrenched his arm to the side so that the needle was torn out of it and dragged out his  _ Ren _ . Hermione paled as his aura, wild and not quite under his control, hit them and their knees gave out. They scrambled backwards across the floor and pressed against the wall, terrified tears running down their face. Kite shuddered, his head spinning as he let go of the  _ Ren _ . He couldn't spare any of his aura for anything other than keeping his body moving, that much was clear. But he couldn't stay, either, not after so much time had passed- three days was practically an aeon at the pace Ging moved at, they'd covered mountains in three days, let alone two weeks- and as he'd gotten a look at the whole room, cramped with machines, the conspicuous absence left a terror in his heart that—

—had he really won?

Whoever lived won the fight, he thought, pulling himself to the edge of the bed with his legs as his stitched-together stomach muscles radiated pain. But he would have died, should have died, if Ging hadn't been there, so did it count? He hadn't been strong enough to win, not really; a draw wasn't a victory, and in the end someone on the verge of death was little better than dead weight. He had to get out, had to move, run, something, find—

Several people in scrubs burst through the door and stumbled, looking back and forth between where he was sitting on the edge of the bed, shaking and with sweat dripping down his face, and where Hermione was still sobbing on the floor. Kite snarled silently in frustration as they moved to restrain him, not because they were anywhere near strong enough to make him budge but because they were in his way, all of them, they didn't understand, he brought up his leg to kick one man out of the way and—

The door slammed open again and Ging pointed at him, furiously shouting "LAY the FUCK. DOWN."

Kite froze, still poised to attack, and slowly lowered his leg. He hadn't even thought to hold back, he realized, his heart still racing. He would've killed them, even without  _ Nen _ . 

Ging put his hands on his hips and scowled. The nurses were trying to pull Kite back down nervously, Hermione staring at Ging's back in shock. Kite shifted backwards uncomfortably, suddenly acutely aware of how ridiculous he'd been acting. A weird atmosphere of embarrassment descended as Kite acquiesced to the nurses' hands directing him back into the bed. As one person checked the ventilator and another began looking for a vein to replace the IV needle Kite concentrated on slowing down his heartbeat. It was fine. He felt ill now that his adrenaline rush was fading. Everything was fine.

When he glanced over, Ging had sat down on the floor and was quietly talking gently to Hermione. They were looking rather harried, Kite saw with a pang of guilt. They hadn't deserved that. They looked to him and as they made eye contact Kite rather uselessly tried to convey an apology via blinking. Ging stood, pulling Hermione up and patting them on the shoulder before directing them toward the door. When he turned around again Kite glanced away.

"Sheesh," Ging muttered, stepping up to the side of the bed. "What's all this about? I step out for a few minutes and everything goes straight to hell..."

Kite's face heated up and he wished he could speak, give some kind of explanation, but all he could do was try and look as ashamed as possible. The nurses finished their work with the machines and exchanged glances, reaching for the restraints on the sides of the bed. 

"Don't," Ging told them coolly.

"Sir, we have to look after his safety, as well as that of staff and other patients—“

Ging met the speaker's gaze unblinkingly and she faltered. "I'll look after him," he said, taking on his reasonable tone. "Don't worry, I guarantee this won't happen again. Right?" He raised his eyebrows at Kite, whose flush deepened as he nodded. "There. We're fine, then." 

The nurses didn't look entirely convinced, but Ging's adamant insistence kept them from reaching for the straps again. One by one they left the room as Ging convinced them that they weren't needed. When only one remained Ging finally turned to Kite, pressing a hand to his forehead.

"Hey," he said quietly. "Does it hurt?"

Kite hesitated, but nodded in the end. The movement had wreaked havoc on his muscles that the fading painkiller couldn't handle. Besides, he couldn't lie to Ging if he tried. 

"Not as much as that guy would've hurt," Ging muttered, too quiet for the nurse to hear him. Kite's stomach twisted with more than pain as Ging frowned at him seriously, his brow furrowed. The hand on his forehead kept Kite from turning away, so he had to endure the crushing weight of Ging's disappointed gaze until it became unbearable and he broke eye contact. 

Ging glanced at the nurse, who nodded and increased the dose of the IV. It only took a minute before Kite felt his eyes drooping as sleep claimed him again. Ging's calloused palm moved to his cheek and Kite leaned into it, grateful for its gentle warmth.

The second time he woke, Kite lay still as he gathered himself. He still wasn't breathing on his own; he still couldn't move his arms much. The call button was still in his hand. Past the sounds of machinery around him he could hear Ging turning pages of a book or magazine and occasionally sighing. 

He got up as soon as Kite shifted and opened his eyes, leaning forward into his line of sight by essentially looking down from directly above Kite's face. "Morning," he said, smiling slightly. Kite's mouth formed the shape of the word back at him without sound. Ging's smile grew in amusement as Kite frowned in annoyance. "Hey, this is a good time to learn Morse code, right?"

Kite mimed an exasperated sigh but smiled as Ging laughed. The blurry memory of panic only exaggerated his relief. 

"... Kite," Ging said as though he'd read his thoughts, his laugh trailing off. "What was that about, earlier?"

Kite shifted his shoulders, not able to really explain beyond a lot of blinking. Ging pressed a hand to his chin, watching him thoughtfully. "Does it have to do with the fight? Uh, once for yes- okay, okay, you've got it."

The ventilator rhythmically pumped oxygen in and out of his lungs as Kite thought back. Sort of, he supposed. It was more a yes than a no. One blink. 

Ging nodded along with him. "Was it a flashback?" Two blinks. "Was Brandy's  _ Nen  _ still hurting you?" Two blinks. "Was it even about a specific thing?"

Kite's eyelids flickered uncertainly and he glanced away. Looking back, it was such an overwhelming feeling of fear that it seemed impossible for it to be about just one thing. Maybe he had still mentally been in the battle, seeing enemies where they weren't. The more he thought about it the more he convinced himself, finally settling on blinking twice. 

"... Okay, I get it," Ging muttered, but didn't look convinced. "Is that all?"

Kite's gut twisted in embarrassment and he couldn't keep his eyes on Ging's for more than a second. Still, he slowly blinked twice. Ging hummed thoughtfully, his presence all the more stolid for Kite's twitchiness. "... Were you..." he asked slowly, "... Looking for me?"

Kite stared resolutely at the ceiling rather than at Ging's face as he blinked once. There was a second of tense silence in which Ging let out a slow breath. "You were afraid I wasn't coming back," he said, drawing another shaky blink. 

Ging reached out and tilted Kite's face back toward him so that he couldn't escape his gaze. Kite reluctantly did, giving up the ghost of being able to worm his way out of admitting it. As their eyes met he braced himself for the weight of Ging's disappointment—

—and jumped where he lay as Ging flicked his forehead hard.

"What kind of bullshit—" Ging fumed. "As if I dragged your bleeding body all the way here for kicks?? Jeez, Kite, what kind of asshole do you think I am??"

He huffed and glowered down at Kite, who gaped with a sort of bewildered guilt at him. Even if he'd been able to defend himself, it was a fairly indefensible position. It now seemed impossible to explain why he'd felt so certain, enough to risk the lives of innocent people. Or rather, he reminded himself as his stomach twisted with nausea, to take them. Without his voice or hands he floundered, settling on mouthing "Sorry." Thankfully, that seemed enough to mollify Ging. 

"Oh well," he sighed. "I wasn't kidding about the Morse code, anyway. I'll find a book or something. These beds can tilt up, right? There's gotta be a lever or something here..." He poked around for a minute on the side of the bed, just outside of Kite's range. There was a clicking sound and Kite shifted as the top end of the bed started lifting up at an angle. Steadily the room came a little more into view. 

"Better," Ging said in a satisfied way. "You comfortable?"

Not entirely, but Kite preferred being able to see what was going on around him, so. One blink. He took an actual look around, now that he could and wasn't trying to tear his way out of the room. It was designed to hold only one bed, which was surrounded by the plethora of medical equipment that Kite assumed was what was keeping him alive. To his left was the door, transparent glass that slid to the side and exited to a cheerfully lit hallway. Opposite from it, the long wall was a blank expanse punctuated only by two framed pictures of flowers and the chair Ging had been sitting in. The wall directly in front of him had a fairly expensive-looking television propped up near the ceiling.

So this was what a hospital looked like on the inside. Kite tried to crane his neck enough to see the ventilator, but couldn't quite make it. The IV bag on his other side was easier to make out, since it was higher. 

"Well, anyway," Ging said, drawing his attention back. "It's true that I won't be here a hundred percent of the time. I'll be in and out, but for goodness' sake if I'm not here when you wake up please don't have another tantrum."

Kite winced and nodded. Ging would be bored to tears in a place like this once he'd learned how the machines worked and gotten to know the nurses. He probably already knew about the machines, actually. 

"If you're going to use  _ Nen  _ for anything, concentrate on getting healed. Hopefully that'll speed things up a bit and we can get out of here faster than a couple of months." He grinned as he said it but Kite could see him getting antsy just at the thought. He sighed internally, thinking back to the Enhancement lessons. Since that was two steps removed from Conjuring, it would probably take some effort to make any real headway on his injuries.  _ Nen  _ users healed more quickly than normal people by default, didn't they? Back before, it had taken Kite weeks to get over cuts not nearly as deep as ones that healed in days now. 

Ging pulled the chair over to the bed and stuck around for a few more hours, rehashing his instructions on healing and carefully watching as Kite attempted it on his right arm. His lungs would take much more effort, and being able to write would be a blessing. Nurses dropped in every half hour to check his vitals, glancing at him nervously out of the corners of their eyes as they poked at the machines. Kite grew accustomed to ignoring them- he couldn't effectively apologize at the moment, so the best thing was to concentrate.

"Right, okay," Ging said eventually, standing and stretching. "I think you've got it. Keep that up, but don't drain all your  _ Nen  _ doing it. Being able to maintain it over a long period of time is more important than fixing stuff really quickly. Better for your body, too. I'll be back tomorrow, so try not to kill anybody in a fit of pique."

Kite nodded and smiled as he left, letting his head fall back on the pillow and staring at the ceiling. His  _ Nen  _ had pretty much recovered, thankfully, so he wasn't running on empty. The painkiller they were giving him made sleep pull at his mind, but he was used to ignoring his body's needs at this point. He closed his eyes, had an uncomfortable moment where he tried to take a deep breath and couldn't, and slipped into meditation.

\--

 

"This is completely impossible," the doctor said disbelievingly, holding up two X-rays side by side. "There has to be a mistake. This is a mistake."

"We've checked," the nurse told her, holding up his hands in a shrug. "It's just not broken anymore. It was broken two days ago, but now the bone is totally healed. He has some trouble lifting it, and his fingers don't have a full range of motion yet, but the muscle and tendons have healed about two weeks' worth as well."

"Impossible!" the doctor repeated, snapping angrily. "His muscles were in shreds! One of these pictures is a lie, that's the only way- how could he be moving it at all, he's supposed to be in a cast?!"

"That man, Mr. Freecss, he, uh, he said to take it off." The nurse said weakly. At the doctor's glare he shuffled his feet and turned red. "He was, um. Very persuasive. And."

"Ugghhh." The doctor rubbed her temples. "I can't believe this is happening."

"Me neither. But, well, he came here a week ago with two broken arms and now he only has one."

"Nice!" Ging said, pressing his fingers along Kite's right upper arm. Kite smiled rather proudly, letting Ging manipulate it in small circles. "Looks good to me. Does it feel right?" 

Kite nodded, bending his elbow and clenching his fist. The truly terrific bruising that still covered the whole of his left upper arm was faded to a mottled yellow-green on the right, the bone just as sturdy as it had been. It had taken about forty hours and almost all of his  _ Nen _ , but he'd healed it. Really, the hardest part was enduring the boredom of fatigue. 

Ging ruffled his hair and grinned brilliantly. "You did a really good job on this, Kite. You should feel proud."

Heat spread across Kite's whole face as he turned bright red, and Ging laughed while he silently spluttered. Ging was reticent with praise in general, let alone so straightforwardly, so Kite was left pressing his hand to his face to hide his blush, completely flustered. 

"Hey, come on, none of that!" Ging chuckled, mussing up his hair again. "Oh wow, I hope they let you wash your hair soon. Anyway, are you going to do the other one now?"

Kite took his hand away from his face and shook his head, pointing at his chest. Ging nodded in understanding. "Yeah, that's a good idea. Maybe they'd release you if your lungs were okay." Kite smiled, glad they were thinking along similar tracks. He pressed his hand against his ribs carefully, finding the sorest spots. The rib fractures, stab wound, and pierced parts of the lungs would all have to be dealt with to some extent; they were too close together for him to be able to focus on just one. Ging probably could have, considering how he'd forced Kite's body to keep functioning during that flight to the hospital, but that kind of precision was...

Was it beyond him? Kite frowned. Was he really just going to accept his limitations? If ever he was going to try and manipulate the  _ Nen  _ within his own body to that level of detail, it would be now. It wasn't like he had anything better to do, even with the books on Morse code and sign language Ging had dropped off. And the bounce in the ball of Ging’s feet still made Kite nervous about how much time he was taking. Just fixing his lungs should be enough to get him ready to leave.

He'd only just resolved to begin when Ging reached over to his hand and pressed the call button. Kite blinked in surprise as a nurse responded with admirable speed, eyeing Kite with some trepidation. "Something you need, sir?"

"Would you increase the IV just a little bit?" Ging asked, keeping his hand where it rested just above Kite's chest. The nurse seemed more comfortable at the sight of it and even smiled at Kite a bit as she reached for the drip. Regretfully, Kite couldn't return it to her as he looked between her and Ging. 

The nurse faltered and jerked back as Kite waved his arm in her direction, signaling her to step away from the drip. He turned back to squint at Ging, who had crossed his arms and was looking at him with raised eyebrows. 

Kite blinked rapidly in Morse code asking for something to write on, wishing he could just damn well speak already. There was no easy way to relay with just his eyes and one hand that he didn't want to go to sleep yet, he had work to do and he could rest well enough just dozing, he couldn't afford another day asleep...

Ging caught his hand and lowered it to the bedside. "You worked hard, Kite," he said quietly. "Go to sleep." When he looked at the nurse she hesitated but eventually quailed under the intensity of the room's atmosphere. Kite made a face as she turned up the dosage, annoyed at being so thoroughly ignored. If Ging was telling him to sleep, surely it was time he could afford to lose... but his impulses were capricious at the best of times, let alone when he was denied total freedom of movement... and he'd already made enough friends among the nurses to get his way, he didn't have anything left to do...

Sleep pulled Kite down irresistibly as Ging rested a hand on his forehead.

\--

 

Dr. Marni Chavez tapped her pen against her desk anxiously, staring at the papers spread across her desk. Her coffee sat on the edge, long since grown cold. It was impossible. Utterly impossible. Every single one of the nurses' reports said that the patient spent all day lying still, seemingly asleep, but the next day his injuries were magically gone. Even the bruises on his arm were steadily vanishing. 

The nurse, Hermione, twiddled their thumbs nervously as she sighed. "You said that he was fine until you brought up the psych ward?" Marni asked, her voice rough with sleeplessness. "That's when he had the panic attack?"

Hermione nodded, glancing away as they remembered it. "Um, yes. He was a bit dazed, but his memory seemed fine. He answered all the normal questions—that took a few minutes, I think. He indicated that he remembered whatever it was that caused his wounds. I, uh, I said I was sorry for that and that we could transfer him to the ward later."

"That's when it started?"

"N-not quite, umm- He was really emphatically saying he didn't want to go to the psych ward, and I said it would be a couple of weeks anyway. That's when it started." They shivered at the memory, color draining from their face. "I s-still can't believe it, he was- just- I couldn't get near him. It was like I'd been punched, but, like, mentally. And nonstop. It only stopped when Ging came in."

Marni steepled her fingers, closing her eyes and furrowing her brow. "That's the man who brought him here."

"Yeah." Hermione relaxed a bit, looking happier as they talked about Ging. "When he came through the door everything just... stopped being so scary. The patient's panic attack ended then, too, and he lay down like Ging said. He, um." They blushed a faint pink. "Ging that is, he told me stuff like, it's gonna be okay, everything's fine, he's not really going to hurt you. 

"... He's a really nice person," they said thoughtfully. "I didn't even talk to him all that much- he came by and we chatted later- but he seems really trustworthy. There's something about the way he looks at you, I think he's a good guy. Like he actually cares."

Marni raised her eyebrows and Hermione shrugged, giving her a wobbly smile.

Later, once Hermione had gone back to do their rounds, Marni sat back in her chair and exhaled slowly. She was going to have to meet this Ging guy.

\--

After twenty hours, Kite had to give himself a break and rest. His head ached, an irritant only made worse by how it throbbed in time with his heartbeat. Healing his lungs, and only his lungs, was far harder than his arm had been. That was only a matter of enhancing the entire upper arm- for the lungs, concentrating on them to the exclusion of his sternum, ribs, and stomach needed his full attention. Not so much meditation as intense concentration. 

He'd been able to doze before, but this time he couldn't let his focus lapse. Still, he couldn't keep it up indefinitely; he took the opportunity to rub his eyes and silently mouth his old favorite curses. Surely it shouldn't take as long to do a month's healing on his lungs as it had to do half a year's on his arm. Damned if Ging didn't make this kind of  _ Nen  _ control look easy, he could only hope that it wasn’t unbalancing his abilities so that Conjuration would be less familiar when he got back to it.

The door slid open and he squinted at it past his headache. It took a second, but when their face registered he blinked in surprise.

Hermione gave him an uncertain smile and wave. Kite uncertainly smiled and waved back. There was an awkward moment while they shifted their weight, but Hermione took a breath and stepped closer. 

"Hello again," they said softly. "I, uh. Am here to check on you. Everyone says you're asleep most of the time. But. You're not."

He certainly wasn't. Kite hesitated, but he couldn't make any more progress until his head stopped feeling like it would break open. He self-consciously wiped away the sweat on his forehead and quickly mimed writing. Hermione blinked blankly, then their mouth formed an O as they held up a finger and ducked out of the room. When they came back, they presented him with a pad of paper and a pencil. 

"There you go," they said, putting them down by his side and immediately backing up. Kite smiled for real, twirling the pencil in his fingers as he thought of what exactly he wanted to say. As he carefully wrote, Hermione checked the IV bag. 

"... That's weird," they muttered. "This is way too low."

Even as Kite turned to dissuade them from increasing it, he mentally winced at the deja vu. Sure enough, Hermione jumped about a foot off the ground and scurried backwards when he half-reached over. Kite pressed the hand to his forehead and made a face. Rather lamely, he picked up and waved the pad of paper. Hermione tensely moved closer until they could read it. It took a minute, since his usual chicken-scratch handwriting was only made worse by how he had to balance the pad on his thigh.

_ Sorry. I didn't mean to frighten you. I hope you're alright.  _

Conveniently applicable, Kite mused, to both situations. Hermione's tense shoulders drooped and they exhaled heavily. 

"Haha, oh. Um, I'm okay, thanks. I guess I'm just jumpy. Ging came by earlier too, and explained things. Not much, really, but I get it." They chuckled, a warbling worried sound. "Classified information. Hunters sound a lot like government spies."

Kite's shoulders shook as he breathlessly laughed. Government spies? Really? He took up the pencil again and Hermione relaxed enough to lean on the side of the bed. 

_ I'm glad. Nothing like that will happen anymore, I promise. Thank you for coming by again.  _

Hermione bit their lip and glanced at him out of the corner of their eye. "Can I..." they ventured, "can I ask why it happened? Was it something I said?"

Kite shook his head before he started writing a reply.  _ It was nothing to do with you. You were just a bystander. It was my fault. _

"What was it, then? Uh, you don't have to say! If you don't want to."

Kite made another face at the prospect of admitting to a second person that he'd had a petulant fit at the thought of being left alone for a few days. It got more embarrassing by the minute. Hermione nodded understandingly. "Okay, that's fine. I just think..."

They twiddled their thumbs, watching him nervously. They chose their words with care, picking them out one by one. "I just think that it's important to take the time to make sure you're healthy."

Kite smiled wanly. _I_ _agree. But not everyone has that kind of time._

He twirled the pencil again, waiting for Hermione to respond. They were frowning at the pad, concern etched across their face. 

"I wouldn't like to be a Hunter," they said finally. "It seems... stressful. And your injuries were-" They cut themself off, glancing to him for any signs of trouble. But Kite stayed still, keeping his composure. "Horrible," they finished weakly. 

_ Occupational hazard _ . 

They looked stricken. "This- has this kind of thing happened  _ before _ ?"

_ The good outweighs the bad _ , he wrote.  _ Being a Hunter has saved my life. Risking my life in return is only fair.  _

Hermione looked more than a little disturbed, but didn't argue. An uneasy silence settled as they continued their checkup. Kite saw that their hands were shaking and mentally cursed at himself. So much for putting them at ease with an apology. 

"Ging said that you would be leaving the hospital in four days," they said abruptly. Kite was jerked out of his thoughts and blinked at them, mentally processing the statement before diving for his pencil. "But I, uh. Hmm. I don't think that's a good... idea..." Hermione trailed off watching him scribble frantically. 

_ How long ago was that?? _

"O-oh, it was- the day before yesterday, I think? When he came by the nurses’ lounge... W-why?"

Kite bit the eraser on the end of the pencil, calculating how much time he had left. Ging typically visited in the afternoon, but he arrived earlier than that to talk to the nurses during their lunch hour; it was late in the day, so two days had already passed. He spat out a piece of the eraser and grimaced.

_ What did he say exactly? _

He had to snap his fingers to get Hermione's attention. They were watching his heartbeat quicken, their face pale, and jumped when he startled them. "Sorry-! Sorry, um, he said... Something like 'Kite is a really fast healer, so I'm not worried about being stuck here longer than four more days.' But th-that's impossible, Dr. Chavez won't even take you off the ventilator for another week..."

Kite's hand tightened around the pencil, but he barely noticed the wood splintering between his fingers. Hermione was halfway to the door, sweat running down their face, but he ignored them. He couldn't check how much progress he'd made while he was on the ventilator, but he couldn't afford to go off the ventilator until he was sure he could breathe on his own. The rhythmic cycle at which the machine pumped oxygen in and out of his lungs didn't feel as painful as it had before, but the interfering soreness of the broken ribs made it hard to tell. He glanced at the sky- it was almost sundown, so if he was done healing his lungs and off the ventilator by noon, he could use the next day to convince the doctors to discharge him, maybe get some headway on his left arm...

He nodded, his mind made up. Laying back, he noticed that Hermione had left the room. Oh, well. It wasn't like he'd be particularly talkative for the next twelve hours anyway.

\-- 

Ging stepped into the hospital the next morning and was immediately stopped dead in his tracks by a dark-skinned woman in a doctor's coat. She stood adamantly in place, glaring at him with her arms crossed. 

"What," she bit out, " _ exactly _ is your relationship to my patient?”

Ging rubbed the back of his head, glancing around awkwardly to the variety of people who were eavesdropping or overtly staring at them. "Uh, do we have to talk here...?"

"Yes." The doctor pressed her lips together and Ging sighed. 

"Fine. Kite's my student."

"You haven't provided us with any contact information for a parent or sibling."

"Well, he doesn't have any."

"The only possible emergency contact we have is you?"

"That's right. He'll tell you the same."

Dr. Chavez inspected him narrowly, tapping her foot in the ground. "Are you aware of the frankly supernatural rate at which your student is healing?"

"Oh, yeah, of course." Ging relaxed slightly, laughing. "Is that all? I can't tell you the specifics of how, but it's nothing to worry about."

Her face darkened and she jabbed a finger against his chest. "You expect me to believe that after the first thing I heard coming in this morning was that he's demanding to be taken off the ventilator? That's not something I should  _ worry _ about?"

Their audience murmured and Ging groaned internally. "I don't see the issue here. You know he's capable of healing much faster than your predictions, why wouldn't he know when it's safe to go off the thing?"

She stared at him disbelievingly. "Because five days ago his lungs were literally  _ in pieces _ ?? I don't care how fast he heals, it's not safe-"

"And two days before that his right humerus was practically dust," Ging said grumpily. "Looks like it's fine to me, though."

Dr. Chavez scoffed, but bit her lip. "... All the same, it's utterly against hospital policy and basic ethics to take patients off of life support machines before we're certain enough time has passed that they can survive."

"Aren't there tests you can run to verify that?"

"Yes, but..."

"I'm guessing you've already run them."

"...”

Ging's shoulders slumped and he rolled his eyes. "If the tests say it's fine and he says it's fine, what's the problem? Can't we just, you know, get it all over and done with?"

Disbelief took up residence on Dr. Chavez's face. "You mean his recovery from  _ extensive trauma _ ? Which, I might add, was almost immediately set back by a violent panic attack?”

Ging crossed his arms, his expression unchanging. "I'll stay here as long as Kite says he needs to. But if he wants to leave, you're not going to be able to stop us."

At her continued glare and the murmurs of disapproval around the room he fumed and looked around in challenge. "As if any of you even know him! Listen, Kite knows the status of his injuries better than you do. So do I. And I trust his judgement of what he can handle, so when the time comes you'd better be ready with those discharge papers."

He stomped past her, grumbling under his breath. Dr. Chavez met his dark look with an equally dark one of her own. "Does that mean," she hissed, "you'll let him be discharged no matter how badly he's still hurt?”

Ging paused and suddenly smirked confidently. "Of course. Any student of mine wouldn't be killed by just this, after all."

 

\--

 

Kite’s room was, unsurprisingly, crowded with a flurry of nurses. Hermione lingered near the doorway, wringing their hands worriedly as a tall black man argued with Kite, who was one-handedly flipping between pages of his notepad with an expression of utmost exasperation. He glanced at the door when it opened and his frown deepened.

“It’s completely impossible,” the man protested, his face lighting up when he saw the two of them enter. “Dr. Chavez! I’m sorry, he’s being completely unreasonable, we’ve been trying to talk him out of it for an hour now.”

Kite rolled his eyes and held up his notepad.  _ My lungs are healed. I don’t need the ventilator anymore. Please remove it. _

“We can’t take the risk,” Dr. Chavez started, her heart sinking when the nurse, Oliver, shook his head and Kite flipped to the next page.

_ Your own tests agree with me. _

“Tests can have false results,” she pressed on. “There’s no way that the amount of damage you sustained could have healed in so short a time.”

_ It’s impossible for my arm to be healed, as well. And yet. _

Ging snorted, quickly adopting an overly solemn expression when Dr. Chavez glared at him. “I don’t know how that could have happened, it’s true, but regardless of that I’m not going to throw our methods out the window. Whatever happened, I’m not taking you off that ventilator until I know for sure that you’re healthy enough to be able to breathe on your own.”

Kite flicked to a new page and scribbled quickly.  _ Which I  _ _ am _ _. _

Dr. Chavez ground her teeth together and crossed her arms. “It would be unethical for me to do what you are asking.”

Kite looked to Ging with frustration and Ging sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “Look, I can appreciate that you’re sticking to what you think is right. That’s great, especially in a doctor. But every test you run is going to say that he’s healed, no matter how many or what kind you end up doing. There’s no point in keeping him here when he’s not injured.”

“He  _ is _ injured!” Dr. Chavez said, just on this side of shouting. “At least  _ ten _ of his bones are still broken, including his sternum and nearly  _ all _ his goddamn ribs, which collapsed directly into his lungs and stomach—in which there’s  _ another _ stab wound—and god only knows how he’s managing to sit up at all considering that his muscles were equally torn up—”

“You don’t have to fill me in on all this,” Ging said. “I was there, after all.”

Dr. Chavez gaped at him. The nurses exchanged wide-eyed glances with each other. Kite rubbed his hand across his face and went back to writing.

“I’ve half a mind to get the police involved in this,” Dr. Chavez said, her voice dropping to a hiss. “Considering that a lot of that blood wasn’t just his.”

Ging shrugged and dug in his pocket, drawing out his Hunter license and spinning it in his fingers. “It won’t do you much good.”

She stared at it for a long second before the rustle of paper diverted her attention to the bed. Kite held up the notepad so that everyone could read it.

_ If you don’t take this thing out, I’m going to rip it out myself. _

“Jeez,” Ging muttered in the dead silence. “Somebody’s reached the end of his rope.”

 

\--

 

It took two hours in total for the ventilator to be removed and for Kite to be able to breathe steadily again. He coughed carefully, concentrating on the texture of the blanket beneath his fingers to ground himself. There had been a tense moment where he’d thought he might have misjudged his progress, where a twinge of panic dragged back the feeling of trying to inhale when there wasn’t any room for his lungs to expand, but after the first few shaky coughs he got the hang of breathing for himself again.

The first thing he asked for when he could speak was discharge papers and Dr. Chavez stormed out of the room, throwing her arms up in the air. The drama having played out already, most of the nurses had vacated the room and gone back to their normal stations. Remaining was Hermione, who repeatedly checked his vitals as they spoke quietly.

“I-it’s really not a good idea, you know… Even just walking will irritate your ribs and stomach, let alone whatever Hunter job you’re going to do…”

“I know,” Kite said, speaking similarly softly. His throat was still fairly sore. “But I’ll be careful. And I appreciate your concern.”

“Dr. Chavez isn’t going to get any papers for you. Sh-she’s really mad, I heard her yelling at somebody about patients who just want to get themselves killed.”

Kite laughed and broke off into a cough, pressing his hand to his mouth. “I suspected as much. Is it possible that you could bring them?”

Hermione chewed on their bottom lip, turning the discarded notepad over and over in their hands. “I really shouldn’t. Um, it’s just not safe, and there’s the Hippocratic Oath and all…”

Kite looked down at his hands, choosing his words carefully. “Your dedication to your morals is admirable. I don’t want to give the impression that I’m ungrateful for what you’ve done for me. But it’s just the fact of the matter that I can’t stay here any longer.”

Ging had stepped out the door once it was clear that the ventilator would, in fact, be removed, waving blithely to Kite and saying he’d gather their things and bring back a change of clothes.

“I’m glad that you’re the one I’m asking this of, Hermione” Kite said. “Because I know you understand that it’s not just for my sake or Ging’s that I should leave.”

Hermione wrung their hands, shame casting a shadow over their face.

“This isn’t a place that it’s safe for me to be,” he said quietly. “I can’t promise that it won’t happen again. So please, help me in this.”

The look on their face was so guilty as they handed him the discharge papers to fill out that he didn’t protest their immediate, wordless exit from the room.

Dr. Chavez came back just as he was reaching the third and final page of the paperwork.

“Hermione told me they’d brought you the papers,” she said flatly, striding over to the bedside with her hands in her pockets.

“As I asked them to.” Kite twirled the pen in his fingers, sparing her a glance. “Are you here to discourage me?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I appreciate your candor, if nothing else.”

She dragged a chair over and sat down facing him, crossing her arms and staring at him until he finished his sentence and put the pen down.

“I don’t suppose I can convince you to simply accept my decision and leave, Dr. Chavez.”

“And I don’t suppose I can convince you to stay here until you’re not half dead,” she retorted. “No, I technically can’t stop you leaving. But I can give you instructions on how to take care of your copious injuries so that they don’t get infected and send you right back here.”

“I see. I would appreciate your assistance in that area.”

Marni clicked her tongue and scowled. “Well, I’m glad. My first point is that all forms of physical exertion are forbidden to you until your ribs and lungs are fully healed.”

“That’s not possible,” Kite said on the heels of her sentence. A tic made her jaw twitch.

“There’s no alternative if you want to keep breathing and standing upright.”

The end of the pen tapped lightly against the small table attached to the bed as Kite thought. “Dr. Chavez, I know that everything that has happened must be difficult for you and the rest of the hospital staff. But there must be a way for me to ensure I don’t reopen my wounds—which I want just as little as you do, if not more—while still being able to do my job.”

It took a second for Marni to pin down what it was about his inflection that bothered her. He didn’t say that there  _ must _ be a way to mean that he thought there was a way she wasn’t telling him. It sounded more like an imperative, that he was demanding there be a way no matter what all medical practice indicated. It reminded her of how adamant Ging had been in his declaration that he and Kite knew his state better than she did. A kind of arrogance, like they were removed from the rules that governed everyone else’s lives.

… Which, she allowed grumpily as she glanced at Kite’s right arm, they seemed to be. “If you can find a way to exercise or work or whatever it is you’re doing without increasing your need to take in oxygen and use your stomach muscles, be my guest.”

Kite nodded slowly. “I understand. I take it there are other points?”

“Number two,” she said, holding up her index and middle fingers, “you’re not eating solid foods for another three weeks. It would put too much strain on your stomach. If the tissue of the organ ruptures, that food as well as your own stomach acid will wreak havoc on your abdominal cavity.”

“How thin does the liquid have to be? Am I limited to broth or would, say, something with the consistency of a milkshake be fine?” Her eyebrows drew down and his mouth quirked up in a small smile. “Not that I’m planning on having any milkshakes.”

“That would be alright so long as you take it slowly. Third point, don’t arch your back very far or very often. That’s pretty self-explanatory, right?”

He nodded, voicing no objections, and she put up a fourth finger. “Last, I have iron supplements and a series of therapy exercises for you to do— _ carefully _ —for your arms. Take your time on them. And don’t lift anything heavy for at least another month.”

She put her hand back down and crossed her arms again. Kite ran a hand through his hair thoughtfully before his smile grew slightly. “Dr. Chavez, you’re not inflating those numbers because you think I’ll do less than what you recommend, are you?”

“I’m doing my job, which is to tell you how to take care of yourself,” she answered testily. “Whether or not you decide to recklessly ignore my advice is up to you.”

Kite spun the pen around in his fingers again and pulled the third page toward himself, still unbothered by her annoyance. “Very well. Thank you, Dr. Chavez, I promise that I’ll do my best to stay alive.”

As he carefully wrote she tapped her fingers on her arm, grinding her teeth. “If you know that leaving puts you in significant danger,” she said suddenly, “why are you doing it? What’s so worth risking your life?”

His hand paused in the middle of a word, but only for a fraction of a second. “That’s what people in my line of work do, Dr. Chavez.”

Marni's face darkened and she leaned forward, putting her elbows on her knees. "Okay. Look, can I just be blunt with you?"

"You’ve been beating around the bush up until now?" Kite asked dryly.

She bit back a retort and exhaled slowly. She wasn’t grumpy enough to speak without care. "Kite. The fact that you are still alive is literally nothing short of an actual miracle. When you came here we spent over a day in surgery picking pieces of your ribs out of your lungs. I don't know how your sternum didn't stab directly into your heart, but it didn't. You should have lost most of the movement of your elbows and fingers for at least a year. It is not an exaggeration to say that you were one hundred percent unable to get any air into your lungs. We had to directly oxygenate your blood to keep you from dying, or at the very least sustaining severe brain damage.

"And that man, Ging, he brought you here with someone  _ else's _ brain smeared across your forehead and didn't tell us a damn thing about how it got there. He just shows up drenched in blood, drops you off, and vanishes. And now, two weeks later, all my nurses are practically in love with him. I don't know what kind of magic-ass powers you two have, but I know for a fact that no matter how fast your body heals people don't go through that shit and come out fine on the other end. As a doctor, I am not prepared to discharge you at this time. I have a responsibility to you that I can't forsake."

She clasped her hands together and met his eyes levelly. Kite regarded her thoughtfully for a moment. 

"I genuinely appreciate your concern, Dr. Chavez," he said finally. "But I can't tell you what you want to know and I can't stay here any longer."

"Why not?"

"Which one?"

"Both."

"... I can tell you that we are both Hunters. Anything further than that would be classified information that the general public is not permitted to know for its own safety. I can't stay because there are professional responsibilities that we need to attend to."

"What responsibilities? You'd be able to fulfill them with holes in your stomach?"

Kite raised his eyebrows, taking on a sardonic tone. "Just a few hours ago you were bowled over by how quickly I had healed. Why would my stomach be any different? It'll heal soon enough."

"How soon?"

"Soon enough. Are you satisfied with that, Dr. Chavez? As I said, I have business to get to."

"... What business specifically?"

It was his face's turn to darken. "I can't tell you that either. If you want to know more, you'll have to ask Ging. He has a better understanding of what's classified or not than I do."

Marni ground her teeth together. They weren't getting anywhere with this. She stood and held out her hand, reaching for the papers on the table. "Regardless of any commitments you may have, as a doctor and, frankly, an empathetic human being I cannot let you leave this hospital."

Her hand hung in the air as Kite eyed it with cold indifference. "Actually," he informed her, "what you can't do is keep me here against my will."

For a long second the only sound was shuffling paper as he turned back to the discharge orders. Marni stood stock-still, her hand still extended. As Kite continued with the paperwork it curled into a fist and fell to her side. "Fine. Then I just have one more question."

"Yes?" Kite prompted mildly, not looking at her. 

"Who was killed?"

His hand froze in the middle of a word and an ink stain spread under the nib of his pen. He didn't look at her, but she could see the tension in his shoulders. "A Hunter named Brandy Willows," he answered stiffly, staring forward at where the black spot on the papers was growing.

"Did you kill her?"

"She was prepared to die. I don't expect you to understand."

Marni couldn't help but shift back slightly, remembering that she'd read once that even Hunters who went on killing sprees often weren't prosecuted at all. Kite didn't seem to care; he didn't even seem to know she was there with how intently he was staring at the papers. "Why were you fighting?"

"I can't tell you that," he answered smoothly, suddenly relaxing, and picked his hand up from the papers. "... I'm going to need another copy of this page, I think, sorry for the inconvenience..."

Marni bit back a sigh and stood. “I’ll get one. Just a minute.”

As she pulled the door open Kite suddenly spoke again. “Dr. Chavez,” he said, and when she turned his face was perfectly, neutrally expressionless. His poker face was all but immaculate save for a tense undercurrent in his voice. “You said he brought me here and then left?”

“Yes.”

“… When did he come back?”

Something about his careful composure tugged at Marni’s heartstrings. “The nurses would know the exact time better than I do,” she told him quietly. “But it was approximately two hours before you woke up.”

He blinked slowly and didn’t otherwise react. She hesitated in the doorway, but then nodded in place of a goodbye and left, shoving her fists into her pockets. It was such a horribly powerless feeling, trying to help people who didn’t want to be helped.

 

\--

 

Ging was waiting in the entryway with a bag over his shoulder as the nurses wheeled Kite to the exit. His face lit up when he spotted Kite coming out the elevator and he was antsy enough to practically hop from foot to foot.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, master,” Kite said dryly, accepting the bag as Ging handed it off to him. A quick glance inside verified that it was a haphazardly chosen change of clothes; a nearby bathroom would serve as a good enough dressing room.

“Ah, whatever. Let’s just be on our way,” Ging said, waving his hand dismissively. He extended a hand to Kite and helped him out of the wheelchair, steadying him as he found his feet again. “Heh, guess how much conditioning you’re gonna need after this long lying around in bed?”

He laughed as Kite groaned under his breath and strode away. When Kite glanced back he’d struck up a conversation with the nurse standing behind the wheelchair. It was really impressive, Kite noted vaguely, how rapidly Ging made friends. Already he knew the names of the vast majority of the nurses in the hospital. A consequence of having little to do over the weeks, presumably.

Changing proved cumbersome, given that his stomach muscles weren’t quite up to cooperating yet, but before long he was out on the sidewalk again, slowly breathing in the fresh air. Ging’s rented car was halfway across the parking lot and by the time Kite was sitting in the passenger seat his chest was aching.

“Hmm,” Ging muttered, eyeing Kite out of the corner of his eye. “Okay, maybe not straight to conditioning, then.”

“I’m fine, I just,” Kite said, swearing internally as each intake of breath strained his ribs. “It’ll just take a minute and I’ll be fine. I can get back to training tomorrow, as planned—”

“Uh, what?”

Kite blinked and looked over at Ging, who wore an expression between incredulity and amusement. “What do you mean, what? I’ve recovered enough, so we can keep going…”

“Well, sure, we can keep going to the next town,” Ging said, watching the road carefully as he steered out of the hospital grounds. “But I’m not going to throw you into a, fuckin, rigorous training session immediately, don’t be ridiculous. We can focus on  _ Nen _ for a while, let your body recover. I mean, damn, Kite. What kind of brute do you think I am?”

“I don’t,” Kite said, feeling disconcertingly bewildered. “But Hermione said that you said I’d be well enough to leave by now, so I figured…”

“Oh, I thought they seemed like the gossipy type. Well, I did think that, and you’re discharged, right? But being discharged and being able to train aren’t the same thing. I just wanted to get you out of that hospital, really, I was about to go mad with boredom…”

“The city wasn’t interesting enough for you?” Kite asked, finding a small victory in having predicted Ging’s limits in this area.

“Eh, it was fine,” Ging said blithely. He took a hand off of the wheel to scratch his face. “But I couldn’t really concentrate on anything, so it all sort of blurred together.”

“Really?” Kite tilted his head to the side trying to imagine Ging being distracted enough not to focus on something interesting. It didn’t click. “Why couldn’t you concentrate?”

Ging made a face and shrugged. He didn’t say anything, but from experience Kite knew that if he just waited until the silence weighed enough, then…

“I was worried, alright?” Ging snapped, pouting. “I was worried.”

A grin worked its way across Kite’s face as Ging glowered at the road petulantly. “About me?”

“Who else do you think?” Ging wrung his hands on the steering wheel and sighed. “You were in pretty bad shape for a while there. It would’ve sucked pretty hard if I came out of a duel like that without  _ any _ students. And…”

He trailed off, fidgeting in his seat. Kite watched him fascinatedly. If showing discomfort was Ging’s way of indicating that he was being genuinely emotional, then this was the most genuine he’d ever been.

“I haven’t lost many friends,” Ging said quietly. “They were typically strong enough to take care of themselves in a pinch, and I never doubted that, so when it comes to something like… like waiting to see if you were going to wake up at all or if I’d been too slow, it’s. Not really my area of expertise.”

Kite recalled what Dr. Chavez had said about when Ging had returned to the hospital. The delay hadn’t been indicative of a lack of care, then. He felt a certain amount of relief and chastised himself for questioning that in the first place. “But you found things to do after I woke up?”

“Well, it certainly was a dramatic way to wake up,” Ging snorted. “Didn’t go a long way toward reassuring me.”

“… Sorry,” Kite muttered. “I guess I wasn’t thinking straight.”

Ging waved away the apology. “You’re here now, anyway, and Hermione wasn’t hurt, so things ended up fine.”

A short pause. Then, “Master, you buried her body, right?”

“Yes. And I sent off her license and everything. As far as the Association’s concerned, she fell to her death while on the job with us.”

“Ah. Good.” Kite looked out the window at the passing streets. A somber silence fell over the car. If he hadn’t still been feeling the fuzziness of the pain medication, Kite thought later, his better judgement would have kept him from saying “I wish she could have survived.”

Ging stilled save for the movements necessary for driving. “Do you?”

“… Not in the sense that I want her to have won the fight. But she—all of them, really, they were all strong, they could have done so much. It just doesn’t seem fair that they had to die when they didn’t do anything wrong.”

“They did something wrong.”

Kite looked over, surprised. If there was any part of what he was saying he’d expected Ging to object to, it wasn’t that one. “What? What did they do?”

Ging glanced sidelong at him, sparing a moment from watching the road. “They agreed to fight when they were weaker than you.”

A strange, dead weight of guilt settled in Kite’s stomach. “You always said that it was possible for the weaker party to win a fight. Yu Jianjun was stronger than I was, but I still won then…”

“He was stronger physically and in terms of  _ Nen _ , sure,” Ging agreed levelly. “But he let you through his guard enough for you to defeat him, so he ended up being weaker as a fighter.”

“He wasn’t  _ trying _ to lose,” Kite protested, feeling he had some responsibility to defend his opponent. “It’s not as though he dropped his guard on purpose, and if I hadn’t managed to get on his back then I would have lost for sure.”

“Nobody  _ tries _ to lose a fight, but clearly he wasn’t trying to win hard enough.”

A flare of irritated offense let words fall out of Kite’s mouth before he could think to stop them. “You can only say that because you’ve never stopped to think about how people weaker than you feel.”

He shut his mouth so fast his teeth clicked together. Ging didn’t react. The words curdled in the air.

“Sorry,” Kite said quietly.

“No, no.” Ging’s voice was mild, unbothered. He lifted one hand to make a beckoning motion toward Kite. “Tell me what you mean by that.”

Kite worried his bottom lip, choosing his words carefully. “I only mean that you’re strong enough to get what you want if you try, master. That’s not the case for most people.”

“I don’t get everything I want,” Ging said.

“Not small things, but the important things. You always accomplish your goal one way or another.” Kite looked down at his hands, intertwining his agitated fingers. “I don’t know it for a fact, of course, but the impression I have after all these years is that you’ve never been backed into a corner you had no chance of escaping from without sacrificing some part of yourself. Something you’d regret losing but would have killed you to keep. I can’t help but think—”

He glanced over nervously. As was usually the case in moments like this, Ging was unreadable. “I can’t help but think that it’s easy to put your life on the line if it’s not actually in danger. All of the people I fought deserve respect facing death without fear.”

Ging nodded. “I see. It’s true that I don’t spare much thought to trying to see the world the way that other people do. It’s impossible to change yourself completely, so there’s basically no point in trying in the first place.

“… And what about you, Kite?” he asked. “You deserve that respect as well, no?”

Kite’s fingers tightened and he could feel his heart beating against his weary ribcage. After so much time, it was still easy to call up the old memory of slavering dogs. “No,” he said quietly, “I suppose that’s something I can’t change about myself.”

He closed his eyes and stewed as Ging tapped the steering wheel thoughtfully. “On that first day we met,” Ging said, “I was taken aback by how powerfully afraid you were of death, even the death of those trying to kill you. And by the strength of your Nen, of course, but Nen is strongly tied to emotion anyway, so an abundance of one tends to affect the other. I considered that following the rules of a Hunter might dampen that fear somewhat.”

“It didn’t,” Kite said. “I just got better at pretending it wasn’t there.”

A tiny smile flickered across Ging’s face. “That was the more likely outcome.”


	7. Unstoppable Force/Immovable Object

The final challenger to Kite’s place lay bleeding at his feet, breath ragged and catching on sobs of pain. Both of his Achilles tendons cut cleanly in two, he scratched at the ground in frustration and struggled to push himself up. Kite stood by his side, still and silent, unwounded.

“You can’t possibly win this fight,” Kite said. “Surrender.”

“No,” the challenger said through gritted teeth. “Never.”

He crashed backwards onto the dirt as Kite’s foot smashed into his face, breaking his nose with a gruesome crunch. Yet more blood stained the earth, shining for a brief moment before it seeped down and turned dull in the dirt.

“I am telling you to surrender.”

“ _ I don’t want to _ .”

“I don’t give a shit what you  _ want _ .”

It was almost pathetic how onesided the fight was, Kite stepping forward to lean his weight into the cut on the other’s left heel. A renewed bout of struggling that was still useless.

“Finn,” Kite said coldly over the sound of half-swallowed whimpering. “Give up.”

“No,” Finn Lambert whispered, his leg spasming under Kite’s shoe but unable to wrench free.

   
   
 

“The last one?” Kite echoed numbly, unsure if he had heard correctly.

“Yup, this’s the last one,” Ging repeated, staring intently at the map of the area he’d picked up at a convenience store. “After this, no more duels.”

“I see,” Kite said, clenching his fists to prevent them from shaking at the overwhelming rush of relief pouring over him. A dread weight already felt lifted from his shoulders, though he knew he had to actually  _ win _ the fight before he could celebrate. “When is it taking place?”

“Two days from now.”

“What—two days? That’s so soon.”

“We’re already where we need to be,” Ging said lightly, gesturing vaguely at the map.

“Where is that?”

“Here,” Ging grumbled.

“… That’s very informative, master, thank you.”

Ging snorted and laid the map down across his lap. “I’ll mark the spot down on the map for you, don’t get your panties in a twist.”

Kite frowned and looked down at the map. “… Why? I can just follow you there, like always.”

A large part of Ging’s training had been focused on being ready. Ready at all times to be attacked, to be called upon to solve problems, to hold his own in drawn-out arguments. It was effective, to be sure—Kite was all but certain he’d never be caught off-guard again in his life. But it also meant that the little moments of relaxation he was afforded were just sharp edges covered by downy pillows.

The red marker looped dexterously between Ging’s fingers. Ging cleared his throat. And now again, the gravelike weight sank back down onto Kite’s shoulders.

“I have to meet somebody from the Association in the city. I can’t be there.”

“Who?” Kite asked, quiet and controlled against the crescendo of his heartbeat. “Why?”

“This asshole called Pariston Hill,” Ging said. He scowled without true rancor. “Head of. Fuckin’. I don’t care. He gives Temp Hunters jobs. He sent me some bullshit email about a problem with the Association’s records about the stars on my license.”

“Is that all? Couldn’t that be done anytime? Why does it have to be then?”

“Look, he’s obviously lying out his ass about the paperwork. That’s all Pariston knows how to do, lie and twist the truth around so it looks like a lie. He’s here for some other reason, and I’m not walking around with blinders on waiting for him to drop a bomb on the city or some shit. Okay, that probably won’t happen, but I wouldn’t put it past him.”

“Did he say anything else? Is that really all the email said?”

“What, you think I’m lying?” Ging snapped, finally glancing over at him sharply. Kite straightened his back and felt his face heat up. “Would you like to screen my emails, while you’re at it?”

“No,” Kite muttered, tugging the brim of his hat down self-consciously. “Sorry.”

“Whatever. The point is, you’re on your own with this one.” Ging shoved the pen into his pocket and folded up the map, pushing it into Kite’s hands and raising an eyebrow at him. “That a problem?”

Kite hesitated and Ging’s eyebrow crept higher. “What if… something like before happens?”

“I’d think you’d be trying your best to avoid that anyway. Or is it your way of asking for attention?”

Kite’s fingers tightened around the paper of the map, nearly tearing it. It had been months and still the viscous smear of blood and flesh against his face was as vivid as if it had happened yesterday, hours ago, seconds ago. If only the rush to the hospital in Ging’s arms was so clear in his memory, less of a deliriously unreal blur.

“… Anyway,” Ging said, visibly uncomfortable, “I greatly doubt that will be an issue. From what I can tell, you’ll come out of this one fine.”

Little by little, Kite’s grip on the map loosened until he could unsuccessfully attempt to smooth out the creases. “Do you think so?”

“That’s what I said. You’re a strong guy, Kite. I know you can do it.”

“Oh,” Kite said, his face flushing again. “Thank you.”

   
   
 

“Hi,” Finn said, smiling and tentatively waving at him. He had a few scratches on his arms, presumably from bushwhacking his way to the forest clearing. Formerly a campground, it sported several messy rings of rocks surrounding a shallow hole; the corpses of campfires. No other human was around for miles, the abandoned trails leading to the spot all overgrown with thistles. “You’re Kite, right?”

He coughed awkwardly as Kite said nothing. “Um, I’m Finn, Finn Lambert. I’m… here to duel you.”

“No you’re not,” Kite said, his blood running cold in his veins and the words a scratchy weight in his throat.

Finn squinted and put his hands on his hips, meeting Kite’s eyes with a fiery determination. “Yes I am! And I’m going to win, too.”

“I refuse.” Kite turned his back to Finn and ignored the sound of protest. “Go home.”

“If you won’t fight, that’s a surrender!” Finn yelled. When Kite glanced over his shoulder, Finn glared at him. He had an earnest and powerful aura, that much was certainly true. “If you won’t fight, that means I win. But I don’t want to win like that! I want to earn it! So you’re not allowed to leave.”

Kite snorted and faced him again. “And you’ll stop me, will you? You shouldn’t even be here.”

“I have as much right to be here as you!”

“You do not,” Kite snarled, striding forward to loom over Finn. “You can’t even be  _ fifteen _ .”

“I’m thirteen,” Finn Lambert said, his eyes bright and fearless as he met Kite’s glare. “And I’m a Hunter.”

 

\--

 

Even when his stomach had twisted into a snake of jealousy with Jianjun, even in Ecinev when his dogs were hunted down, Kite had never felt such searing, white-hot rage.

“Give. Up.”

Finn’s choked refusal cut off into a ragged, involuntary cry as the air was forced out of his lungs, his body curling into a fetal position around where Kite’s foot had rammed into his stomach.

“You’re going to die. There’s no point in this. Give up and go home.”

“ _ No _ .”

Another kick; Finn spat out fragments of his front teeth.

“ _ I’m not going to kill you _ .”

“Then you lose,” Finn hissed, his words distorted around the missing spaces in his mouth.

He jerked in place but didn’t scream as Prima Cadenza went through his wrist and pinned his arm to the ground. There was no dullness other than the haze of pain in his eyes.

“I cannot lose,” Kite breathed, bending to look Finn in the face. “And you cannot win.”

“I’m not giving up,” Finn said, his face tensing as his tongue pressed to the raw nerves in his teeth. “If you’re that determined, end it.”

He didn’t move or blink as Kite drew Prima Cadenza free and pressed the tip against Finn’s forehead.

“Is that what you want?”

“No,” Finn said. “But I don’t want to turn back now.”

Prima Cadenza wavered, just a centimeter.

“I could walk away,” Kite said, “and leave you here. Call someone to come pick you up. You couldn’t stop me.”

Finn blinked slowly. “Then it wouldn’t be over.”

“I doubt you could even walk again, now.”

“I’d find a way. I’ve always found a way. I won’t give up.”

Slowly, Prima Cadenza’s point shifted aside to dig in the dirt. “No,” Kite said quietly, “I don’t think you will.”

Finn’s eyes tracked him as he turned and looked into the empty forest, the surroundings eerily silent. Somewhere, miles distant, Ging was battling someone in a very different way, waiting to see which of them would break first.

“You truly have your heart set on this, don’t you,” Kite murmured into the trees. “I am sorry, Finn. I don’t think I can leave you alive.”

Finn breath hitched for a moment.

“I should have known better than to think you would give up. I apologize.”

“… That’s okay,” Finn said. “What… what changed…?”

“If I leave you alive, you won’t stop working until you’ve defeated me, yes?” Kite’s lip curled up in a wry smile at Finn’s determined nod. “I can’t risk it. I’m afraid…”

He knelt by Finn’s side and met his eyes on equal level. “I’m afraid, in the end, you’re stronger than I am. Unfortunate that we should meet before you had the chance to grow.”

"Oh, " Finn said, looking down at his unmoving hand. " Then... can I at least know who you are?"

Kite blinked. "Why would you want to know something like that at a time like this?"

Finn bit his lip uncertainly. "It just seems right. I... if I'm going to die, I want to know whose hands it's at."

Prima Cadenza's guard dragged across the ground as Kite let his arm fall to his side. Crazy Slots remained silent despite the dirt collecting on its face. "I see." A laugh bubbled up in his chest, but it was easy enough to smother with the weight of the sword in his hand. "Have you always been this way?"

It was Finn's turn to pause and blink. "What way?"

Kite gestured vaguely. "Noble."

"Um, I suppose so? It... it's just the way I think. I'm not trying to be noble..."

Kite had to smile at that, if bitterly; Finn's eyes were as open and honest as any he'd ever seen. He doubted the boy was capable of lying convincingly. More than anything—more than pain, or determination, or even the steel-hard battle instinct—Finn's eyes shone with the genuine desire to know more. The purehearted interest of someone who was a Hunter to the marrow of their bones. 

... It was familiar.

"Very well. Ask me anything you'd like."

Finn's face lit up even as his blood pooled darkly around his body. "Really? Okay, um- what do you want?"

"... You're going to have to be more specific than that."

Finn gave him an abashed smile. Kite felt that smile tightening around his neck. "Sorry, I just think it's the best way to get to know someone to find out what's the thing they want most. So—?"

"I want to..." Kite paused as the word 'survive' hovered on his tongue. It was what he'd told Ging all that time ago, what felt like decades. And while it was still true, it didn't feel like the truth. There was something lacking in it. "I want," he repeated carefully, "to live."

That was the better answer. He could see Finn rolling it around in his mind, feeling it out as he kept that burning stare fixed up at Kite, away from his own wounds. His tongue poked out a little as he thought hard. There was blood on his broken teeth. It was cute, in a morbid way. "I see. What were you going to say before?"

"That I wanted to survive," Kite answered, shrugging. "That's what I would have said before. But it's not enough anymore. Just surviving... I couldn't exist like that again. I'd die first."

Finn nodded, smiling in agreement. "Before what? What changed your mind?"

"I met Ging." Kite cursed internally as the crestfallen expression that shadowed Finn's smile for a second made his heart lurch in sympathy. He couldn't afford to feel bad for his enemy. He made his fingers tighten around Prima Cadenza. But he couldn't keep the question from tumbling out of his mouth. "Have I upset you?"

"O-oh, no," Finn said quickly, brightening up again with a clearly false cheer. "I just... would have liked to experience that too."

Kite closed his eyes as, for a second, he was in four places at once, facing five people with the same eyes, knowing five different times that there could be no surrender but to death. Even though he was miles away, Kite felt Ging's presence in every breath of air he took. "I know you would have," he said quietly. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry that you are here now."

Finn let his false smile fade as he looked intently at Kite's face. "Thanks. I—He must really be amazing, to mean so much to you. So I don't regret trying."

"That's good." Kite bore his scrutiny easily, more than used to being examined. Finn might have similar eyes, but he didn't have anywhere near Ging's intensity. Not yet. "And he is. Ging is, doubtlessly, the greatest Hunter in this world."

Finn's eyes closed for a second. He looked like he was savoring the words. His bottom lip trembled for a moment. "I was so close," he said, his voice much smaller, empty of the certainty that had lit his stare on fire. "I was so close..."

Kite gritted his teeth, unable to even feel angry anymore no matter how much he wanted to. The world was bending down, he could feel it in every part of his heart that was aching to help Finn stand and stop the bleeding before it was too late. It was an imperative from some higher power that he had to like Finn, some cruel deity's joke that he had to be caught between this rock and hard place. He stayed silent as Finn sniffed messily. He should have ended it quickly. He should end it right now, before he had to break and lay down his sword, before the universe bent to Finn’s will like it did Ging's. He had to move. He couldn't move. 

"... Hey," Finn said, opening his eyes again and snapping Kite out of his train of thought. "Can I... ask you to promise me something?"

"As if we're  _ friends _ ?" Kite snapped, more acerbically than he'd intended. The iota of anger that had suffused him for that second died as Finn flinched and looked down. 

"I think we could've been friends," he mumbled. "In some other life. That would have been nice."

"... Yeah," Kite agreed, his shoulders slumping with this defeat contained in such small words. "Probably."

"Is it okay," Finn ventured, looking very much his age as he met Kite's eyes again, "if I think of you as a friend?"

The weight of his sword was draining away all of his energy. He was so tired. So tired. "I can't stop you," he conceded. "What are you asking me for?"

"Since I—since I can't, my friend should s-stay as his student." Finn blinked back tears fruitlessly, his voice strengthening with his impassioned plea. "So promise that you'll keep winning, and stay by his side."

Kite didn't move an inch for a long moment, then stepped forward and knelt in front of Finn. "I promise." He laid his free hand over Finn's, squeezing it slightly. Finn's fingers curled around his shakily, clumsy with pain and slippery with blood. Kite met his gaze evenly, finally, finally feeling nothing besides what he needed to feel. "I haven't lost yet. I won't ever lose. There is no force in this world that can take me from his side. You, and everyone who's come before—I can never forget a single one of you. I owe you the strength I've gained, after all.

“... Thank you," he said, squeezing Finn's hand and smiling genuinely. "I wouldn't be able to exist without Ging. I wouldn't be anything without him. And you let me prove that I deserve to live." Finn smiled through his tears in return, relaxing enough to let his breath grow uneven. "Thank you. You deserve better than this, but thank you. You did your best. I won't let you down."

Even as Finn wavered, his eyes growing dull, his face shone with pride. "Yeah," he breathed. "I know you won't."

Kite nodded, speaking gently. It was easy once he'd figured out how to think about it. It didn't matter if they were prey or an enemy or a friend. Only one thing mattered. "Hey, Finn. I want to know my friend, as well. What do you want?"

Finn's face shifted from dullness to surprise to brilliant happiness in the space of a moment. He straightened up as much as he could, lifting his chin proudly as he spoke with conviction. "I want—"

Prima Cadenza pierced through his brain too quickly for him to feel pain before he died. Too quickly, Kite hoped, for him to even realize what was happening as the metal entered his head above the left ear and exited below the right. The tip of the sword dug into the dirt, angled so that as Finn's body went slack his head slid down it to rest against the ground. Blood coated the blade nearly to the hilt. A drop trickled out of Finn's eye socket, dissolving into his tears.

"Sorry," Kite told him, carefully putting his hand against Finn's head to hold it down and extracting his sword. It slid free with a wet sound. "You were in my way."

 

\--

 

The field was heavy with silence; the tiny sound of cloth on metal seemed deafening. He slowly slid a rag over Prima Cadenza’s blade, wiping away the blood before he sent it away. It would always be clean when summoned, but putting it away dirty with a child’s blood was an abhorrent thought. It was, after all, in many ways the physical manifestation of his soul.

Appropriate, that all its forms should be cold metal or fragile porcelain.

“You’re quiet,” he said under his breath.

Crazy Slots remained inanimate.

“Not going to laugh?”

Nothing.

“You must have  _ something _ to say.”

Nothing.

“Some kind of name to call me.”

Nothing.

It was clean enough to dismiss now, but as the cloth, stained with cooling blood, weighed down his left hand he flipped the sword around in his right to glare at Crazy Slots’ face on the hilt.

“You normally can’t shut your mouth. Why start now?”

Nothing.

“You picked a hell of a time to start behaving.”

Nothing.

“ _ Say something _ .”

Nothing.

His shoulders shook minutely and his scowl deepened. “The one time,” he hissed, resentment darkening his words, “I could actually  _ use _ someone to talk to…”

The bright yellow 1 in its mouth shivered as Crazy Slots’ voice, uncharacteristically subdued, clicked out words. “To distract you.”

Kite lowered it slightly, half-surprised that it had obeyed at all. “I don’t have anything to be distracted from.”

Crazy Slots didn’t dignify such a blatant lie with an answer. He still had to dig the grave.

“… Scratch what I said about behaving.”

“Can’t face your wrongdoings?” it asked snidely.

“I haven’t done anything wrong,” Kite snapped, clenching his fingers around the pommel so hard his hand shook.

“No? Even your master knew it.”

Ice ran through his veins. “That’s not true. Ging was called away. He would have been here if it hadn’t been urgent.”

“More urgent than witnessing a murder!” Crazy Slots crowed. “He didn’t need to be here. In what world would you have lost?”

“… I could have spared him.”

“No you couldn’t.”

“I could have.”

“And what then? You’d have lost everything.”

“… not everything…”

“What do you have that isn’t that man’s doing?”

Kite said nothing.

“Of course you’d win.” Crazy Slots’ face trembled as its voice turned bitter. “He ordered you to win.”

“That’s not the only reason!”

“Then what is?”

Kite pressed his lips together. The words felt dull in his mouth, like they always had. “He decided to put his life on the line. It would have been worse to disrespect that.”

“Oh, I must have forgotten!” Its flat metal fingers twitched angrily. “The fucking thirteen-year-old brat decided to kill himself, so you had to let him.”

“Don’t talk about him like that!”

“Why shouldn’t I? Not like it matters to him. As if you have the right to stop me when you’re the one who shoved me through his skull.”

“… He knew that was a possibility.”

“He didn’t know  _ anything!! _ ” Crazy Slots screeched. “His fucking bright-eyed idealistic ass wouldn’t know death if it hit him in the face, which it  _ did! _ He was just some  _ kid _ !”

“He was older than I was when—”

He faltered. Crazy Slots’ facial expression couldn’t change, but he could feel it staring poisonously at him. Its voice lowered, becoming distorted. “He wasn’t like you. Don’t act like he was like you. Normal eight-year-olds haven’t sicced ravenous dogs on someone and watched them be eaten alive. Normal eight-year-olds get told grandpa went on fucking vacation until they can handle knowing that he died. Death doesn’t  _ exist _ for normal children.”

“Normal children don’t become Hunters, either.”

Crazy Slots paused. When it spoke again, for the first time it sounded almost sad. “He stepped into a world he didn’t understand, so he deserved to die?”

“He understood,” Kite said under his breath, closing his eyes and grinding his teeth together. “Anyone who got as strong as he did has to have understood. He knew the consequences. He accepted them. He chose this life, and this death.”

Neither spoke for a minute.

“I didn’t start talking to you so you could make me feel worse,” Kite muttered.

“What would you like me to say?” Crazy Slots asked. Kite froze, unsure if it was saying what he remembered or if he was remembering it because it was said aloud. “That a little blood on your hands isn’t too high a price to pay for a better life, for being stronger than everyone else?”

The weapon dissipated into smoke that he waved away. “There’s no point to this,” he snarled to the absent clown. “I did what I had to. There’s no taking it back, so there’s no point feeling bad about it.”

All the same, he had to step away to vomit as he searched Finn’s pockets for the boy’s license.

 

\--

 

His tongue still tasted of bile at the hotel an hour later. Some of it had gotten in his hair and he attempted to clean it out, which led to his finding himself kneeling on the bathroom floor clawing desperately at pieces of bone and brain matter that were caught in his hair, fragments of the dead that wouldn’t stop hounding him even after he’d defanged them, relived the memories so many times they turned grey, until he could watch Turner’s head hit the ground and feel Jianjun’s spine snap under his heels and hear the sisters’ final gasps of breath and smell the blood coating him from his head to his waist without betraying anything to the person looking him in the face. It was commonplace for Hunters, something everyone who accomplished anything had to deal with, there would always be obstacles that had to be dealt with in the way of the loftiest goals, they all felt this way, all had the weight of ghosts on their shoulders, it was just something to live with, it wasn’t worth the time he lost to it.

His shoulders heaved as blood—real blood? old blood?—stained his fingers. He looked at it from far away, how it spread along the tiny grooves in his skin, how it was halted when it reached one of the tiny marks, not significant enough to be called a scar, from when they had carefully, carefully sliced open his palms so he would know exactly what the sharp edge of a blade felt like. He learned fast, he’d always learned fast, always had to learn fast. It hadn’t been bad. It was thanks to that that he could take a hit in a fight without missing a beat. All Hunters needed pain tolerance to do their jobs properly, all Conjurers needed to learn how their victims would feel.

It wasn’t anyone’s fault. He repeated the words to himself in a mantra. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. They had stepped into this world by choice and left it again when they happened to be too weak. It was unfortunate, that was all. It was a risk every Hunter agreed to take by passing the Exam.

Crazy Slots appeared by his side, its face smooth and unbroken ceramic. He’d been half-expecting it to shatter in his fingers, crumbling into so much dust against the weight of his own revulsion at the sight of it.

“It wasn’t anyone’s fault,” he told it.

“If that’s what you need to believe, sure,” Crazy Slots replied. “But you can’t lie to  _ me _ .”

It shattered around his fist, as did the wall.

“Don’t say anything,” he told it later, cupping his hands around its outstretched fingers. For once it obeyed without protest, remaining silent as he curled into a ball and pressed it against his chest, resting his forehead on his knees. The comforter off the bed draped around his shoulders, hiding all but the back of his head from view.

 

\--

 

Ging didn’t look surprised to see him tucked away in the corner of the room.

“… Hey,” he said awkwardly. Kite didn’t respond and Ging cleared his throat. “What’d the wall do to piss you off?”

Kite lifted his head just enough to eye the hole going into the bathroom. “Sorry,” he muttered, dropping it back down. “I can pay for it.”

“No, I’ll cover it.” The soft sound of Ging’s footsteps and their subtle vibrations through the floor grew closer. Kite curled up smaller, tensing, but when Ging’s hand slid under his forehead he followed the silent instruction to look up.

“… These’ll get you some stares,” Ging said, sliding his thumb across the shallow cuts Kite’s clawing had resulted in.

“Sorry,” Kite said again, feeling the dead weight of every syllable on his tongue. “I’ll fix them.”

Soon, he added mentally, and felt immeasurably relieved when Ging didn’t press him to heal immediately. It was tiring enough trying to read Ging’s expression and decide when his allowed moment of self-indulgent wallowing was reaching its end.

If something is wrong, he could already hear, become stronger and make it right. If something is wrong, it’s because you’re too weak. Feeling bad alone isn’t enough to get anything done. Useless.

“Are you hurt, other than this?”

“No.”

“That’s good.”

Silence. Ging’s hand rested against his face and Kite took a measured breath, closing his eyes. It was good that his hands were still curled tightly around Crazy Slots and pressed against his chest, or it would have been all too obvious how badly they were shaking. He couldn’t even begin to bolster himself against the idea of acting normal again, but it had become intensely clear that if Ging asked him to, he would. There was nothing he wouldn’t do if Ging asked for it.

“… Kite,” Ging said, his voice soft but close, and Kite froze as Ging brushed his bangs aside and pressed a light kiss to his forehead. “Why are you so upset?”

Crazy Slots’ ceramic cracked beneath his fingers and it vanished, leaving only smoke that drifted up to partially obscure Kite’s face and the instant of anguished fury that slipped past his control, before it could scream  _ How dare you act like you don’t  _ **_know_ ** .

It would have been nice if he could enjoy finally getting a gesture of overt affection. But the price it came at was too high for him to feel anything but cheated.

As soon as it had come, the bitter anger on his tongue melted and, absentmindedly, he felt tears running down his cheeks. He couldn’t be angry at Ging, he couldn’t, he  _ couldn’t _ . If he blamed Ging then it would have all been for nothing. But still—

“I shouldn’t have done it,” he said hoarsely. Past caring about dignity, he reached out and tentatively pulled Ging closer to him by the shirt. Ging shifted forward and Kite buried his face in Ging’s shoulder, what little resolve he had left breaking as Ging’s arm wrapped around his back in return.

“I didn’t want this,” he sobbed, his entire body shuddering. “I never wanted this, master! I always, always wanted to stay with you, but this—This is—”

“No different than the previous duels,” Ging said.

“It  _ is _ different! Master, he was th- _ thirteen _ , he shouldn’t have died, I shouldn’t have—have—”

His throat caught on the words  _ killed him _ and Kite swallowed hard. Ging, unperturbed, stroked a hand through his hair.

“How could you?” Kite whispered, fatigue smothering the fear gnawing at his stomach so that he could ask at all. He didn’t have the energy to walk on glass. Wanting to know, at least, was all he could manage.

“How could I what?”

“Ask that of me.”

Ging hummed, twirling a strand of Kite’s hair around his fingers. “You didn’t have to do it.”

Kite flinched. “I should have just died?”

“That was an option.”

The  _ only _ other option. Kite’s fingers curled tighter in Ging’s shirt. Surrender was no different from death. Worse, perhaps, though it was hard to imagine anything worse than death. Something like living after having died.

“I don’t want to die,” Kite confessed, exhausted at last, his head resting heavily on Ging’s shoulder. “I tried all this time to accept it, but I still can’t understand. No matter what, I can’t bear the thought of dying.”

Ging breathed out slowly and shifted away slightly so that he could lift Kite’s face and look him in the eyes again. “What,” he said, raising his eyebrows, “you don’t have the resolve to die for your ideals?”

Kite’s stomach twisted and he dropped his gaze to Ging’s chest. “No,” he said weakly, “I don’t.”

“Plenty of people don’t.”

“Those people aren’t  _ Hunters! _ ” Kite protested. “They don’t have to put their lives on the line, so it doesn’t make a difference. But Hunters—to survive, Hunters have to be ready to, to die.  _ You’re _ the one who taught me that!”

“Did I?” Ging muttered, ruffling his own hair into nonchalant disarray and squinting doubtfully. “Not wanting to die is what makes most people strong in a fight.”

“Well, yes, but… But being ready to die is part of a Hunter’s pride. Isn’t it?”

Ging shrugged. “Sure. But you’ve been trying that for years now, and it hasn’t been working, has it.”

Kite glanced away, leaning back against the wall to steady himself. It felt wrong that after so much time working himself to the bone he should be so much less sure of himself than he had back when he was nothing more than skin and bone. “It hasn’t.”

“So at this point, it’s a better idea to go in a different direction.”

There was a tense undercurrent to Ging’s voice that Kite had never heard before. It was disconcerting, since so much of Kite’s time was dedicated to reading Ging’s moods. He trod forward in the conversation carefully. “What do you mean?”

He moved back, his shoulders and head hitting the wall, as Ging pointed emphatically into the air. “What,” he asked Kite, his eyes dark with focus, “was your first thought when your  _ Nen _ was awakened?”

_ An invisible bludgeon; cold, cutting water and a fire in his lungs; clawing at the edge of the walkway in frigid pain with blood on his ragged fingernails; a dog’s teeth clamped onto his shirt, pulling, and he could feel his flesh being torn away already and _

“‘I don’t want to die,’” Kite said numbly, staring at Ging’s upraised finger, grounding himself in the present with the sight of it.

“I thought as much. And that feeling, that desire—has that grown any weaker over the years?”

“… No.” Kite wrapped his fingers around his upper arms. Still stick-thin; how little he’d changed. “If anything…”

Ging nodded. “I thought as much.”

“Why?” Kite asked, pressing his hand to his face and rubbing away the lingering tear trails there. “Why is it important how long I’ve been f-failing?”

Ging’s finger moved to point at Kite’s chest and a subtle smile played across Ging’s lips as he ignored the question to press one of his own. “What did I tell you about how intense emotion affects  _ Nen? _ ”

Kite paused.

“Especially intense emotion felt over a long period of time.”

“I already have a  _ Hatsu _ ,” Kite said, gesturing vaguely to the tiny wisps of smoke fading into nothingness. “How could this help me at all?”

“If this were a matter of just trying to develop some random new ability, you’d be right to doubt,” Ging said, crossing his arms and leaning back. “But in the end, using  _ Nen _ is just about making what you want to happen, happen. How well you can use an ability is just related to how much you want to use it—and, admittedly, how much practice you’ve had using  _ Nen _ in that way. I could probably manage to summon some of your weapons, for example, even though it’s not my  _ Hatsu _ , since I’ve had a ton of experience with Nen use.”

“It can’t be that simple. There are areas of  _ Nen _ that people just can’t be proficient in, it doesn’t matter how much they want to be.”

“ _ Nen _ masters can perfect techniques outside of their natural inclination.” Ging tapped his finger, impatience seeping into his voice. “I’ve told you that.”

“Right,” Kite muttered, “sorry. So… you’re saying I could make a  _ technique _ out of this?”

“Theoretically,” Ging agreed. “Theoretically, any technique you want to develop can be developed with enough determination and effort.”

“Theoretically.”

A grin; a shrug of the shoulders. “I’ve found that the people who say things are impossible just gave up at some point. As far as I’m concerned if it’s hard, just work harder at it.”

“Of course.” Kite sighed, his shoulders hunching over as he ran a hand through his hair. Having said it once already, he knew it was useless to point out how unsympathetic Ging was to the weak. It was a trait that most often manifested as faith in the strength of his companions, but an uncompromising faith. He truly believed that his friends were strong, that they could walk away from any battle victorious and with their head held high. By extension, if one such friend couldn’t overcome a challenge, it was simply because of a deficit in their determination.

Kite stopped thinking about it. It felt like too much of a slap in Finn’s bright-eyed face.

“In any case,” he said, “what sort of technique are you suggesting I try and develop?”

“What do you  _ want _ to develop?” Ging shot back. “It’s your technique, whatever it ends up being.”

“… Do I have to think about it now?” Kite asked miserably, despising the edge of a whine to the question. He kept his eyes on Ging’s crossed arms and his tapping finger.

“Since it’s an ability tied to the strength of your emotion, it’s most likely going to work if you make it at a point when your feelings on the subject are powerful,” Ging said lightly. “But I can’t exactly do anything but give you my advice.”

   
 

 

Crazy Slots tried to say something when it appeared in Kite’s hands again, but its voice cut off abruptly in the middle of a harsh syllable when Kite’s finger pressed against the flat surface of its open mouth. The ceramic indented beneath his finger like rubber, the bright red shade of its tongue and soft palate deepening to monochromatic burgundy. When his hand drew back, the surface rippled.

“It’ll need some specific stipulations if you’re making it one of Crazy Slots’ numbers,” Ging supplied. He had shifted to lean back against the wall by Kite’s side, his legs crossed and their shoulders pressed together. “It can’t just come up randomly.”

“Of course,” Kite muttered. “This number will only come up when I am about to die. Would that work?”

“Yeah. What else?”

“… A weapon has to already have been summoned.”

“What about the way you die?” At Kite’s dubious glance Ging went on. “Will it work if you die of illness? Old age? What if you escape an enemy only to bleed out, will that be sufficient?”

Kite’s finger absently tapped against Crazy Slots’ mouth, making small swells that were trapped by its lips, his eyes fixated on the movement. “How many limitations does it need?”

“That depends on you. How many limitations do you feel it needs before you’ll actually manage to do it?”

“… That,” Kite sighed, his eyes closing and his head falling back against the wall, “depends on what it actually does.”

“And what does it do?” Ging pressed, a hard sound denoting that he’d reached over to rap his knuckles against Crazy Slots’ hat—an action that would have had the clown shrieking if it could speak.

“I don’t know,” Kite said helplessly. His fingers rubbed his eyes, all but limp with exhaustion. “How could a  _ Nen _ ability just let me  _ not die? _ ”

“Are you asking me for ideas?”

As though Ging wasn’t bursting at the seams to get the number defined and locked into Crazy Slots’ reel. “Yes, I’m asking you for ideas, please.”

“There are plenty of ways to avoid dying. You could be temporarily invulnerable, heal yourself, teleport away… Those are examples of Enhancement and Emission, though. It’ll be a lot easier to make this work with something Conjuration-based.”

“Like?”

Ging clicked his tongue. “What, you’re gonna make  _ me _ do all the work?”

“… No.”

At least Ging’s weight against him offered some grounding. Without that, Kite probably would have just ended up staring at the ceiling light and doubting he hadn’t just created an elaborate, morbid dream for himself to cope with having starved to death on the streets or something. A vivid fictional life stitched together in his last moments. That would explain how often he endured the distinct feeling that he wasn’t an actual person, actually.

“Could I Conjure a new body?” Kite asked, hearing his own voice as though through a tunnel.

“What, exactly the same as this one? Maybe, but it would take a lot of  _ Nen _ , and if you already have a weapon summoned you’ll most likely have been fighting for some time when the ability is used. It’ll have to be something that doesn’t require a lot of  _ Nen _ . You’re on the verge of death, after all. Chance are somebody’s kicked your ass.”

Kite’s eyelids slid closed. Opened. The ceiling light left colorful afterimages behind them. “Master. Could you please not… say it like it’s… already happened?”

“What? That’s kind of nitpicky. Why?”

“It’s,” Kite said, his hand moving vaguely through the air to search for a fitting word. “Uncomfortable.”

“Fine, whatever,” Ging said, waving away the issue. “Getting back to the  _ real _ issue here, Conjuring yourself a new body isn’t feasible. Unless it’s a really, really small one or something like that, which would be—”

He stopped suddenly, his face shifting from annoyed calculation to revelation.

“… Would be what?” Kite asked tentatively. The abrupt stop had drawn his eyes over to Ging, and the intense scrutiny there was more powerful than anything Ging had directed at him before. He wanted to look away, escape inspection for at least a little while, but, well. Where else would he go?

“A really, really small new body,” Ging breathed, bringing his steepled fingers up to press against his lips. “That could work… That could definitely work…”

“What could work?” Kite pressed, bewildered and beyond comprehending any of the emotion running across Ging’s face.

“I suppose that wouldn’t really be Conjuration, though,” Ging said to himself, his eyes narrowing and sliding across Crazy Slots’ face. “The real question is whether it would count as Emission or Specialization…”

“Master, please,” Kite said desperately, “what are you  _ talking _ about?”

“Start over,” Ging said.

Kite blinked. “… What, on the ability? We already decided—”

“No, no, no,  _ start over _ ,” Ging interrupted. “Get yourself a new body entirely! Conjure a  _ zygote _ .”

It took Kite a few seconds to process the idea.

“Be born again?” he asked. “… Wouldn’t that require someone to. Uh. Give birth?”

“It’s a question of whether you create a new cell out of Nen or implant your aura, and thus self, into an already existing one,” Ging said over him. “Implanting your aura would be more along the lines of Emission, which would make it much harder… but in order to Conjure an entirely new zygote you’d need to know exactly what DNA sequence it had, which would be completely ridiculous.”

“Master.”

“There must be a way to transfer your aura to another body without having it fall into Emission… Manipulation would be another way, but it’s not much better.”

“ _ Master _ .”

“But then again, using a  _ Hatsu _ to actually transfer aura from one body to another is much more Specialization than anything else, and given the circumstances it’s not unreasonable that you could develop some affinity for Specialization…”

“I don’t like this idea,” Kite said.

Ging blinked blankly at him.

“What?”

“I don’t like this idea,” Kite said again. “I don’t—I don’t want to involve another person.”

Ging’s brow furrowed, his frown creeping toward being a scowl. “Why not? It’s the most practical way of doing what you want to do. It has the highest chance of actually working.”

“But it’s…” Kite trailed off, casting about for the proper word. “ _ Creepy _ .”

Ging actually snorted. “Creepy? Really?”

“Yes! Master, are you actually saying I should make someone—make someone  _ give birth _ to me?” A shudder ran down Kite’s spine at the words. “It’s just. Weird.”

The single-minded focus that was so characteristic of Ging faded from his face, though not entirely; he rubbed his hand across the stubble on his chin. “Do you have a better idea?”

“Well, no,” Kite admitted, “but there must be one.”

“Before we discard  _ everything _ I’ve suggested, I have a question for you.” Ging raised a finger and pointed at Kite’s chest. Another shiver crawled along Kite’s back at the hard dispassion in Ging’s eyes. “Say that the technique works as I’ve described. Your aura has superseded whatever aura this zygote would have grown into having. The fetus is, for all intents and purposes, you, though without the DNA you originally had. Whoever carried the fetus is distraught to learn that what they thought would be their child is actually someone else entirely.”

Crazy Slots’ ceramic creaked as Kite’s left hand tightened around it. His right balled up in the fabric of the bedsheet. Again, he felt disconcertingly unreal. “Master, please…”

Ging’s finger dug into his chest, just above his heart. Kite wasn’t sure how he could move away without seeming like he wanted to move away, and he didn’t want to because it was always nice when Ging managed to put aside his compunctions about personal space, but…

“Do you  _ actually _ care?” Ging asked. “Enough to die for it?”

Kite opened his mouth, then closed it again. Looked down at Ging’s hand and the defensive curl of his own limbs under the loose sheet. “No,” he answered, barely audible even to himself. “No, I guess I don’t.”

   
   
 

As his finger pressed to Crazy Slots’ scowling face, just below its top lip, a light flickered around the edges of his skin.

“It only comes up if a weapon has been summoned and I am about to die,” Kite repeated under his breath. Slowly, he drew his finger in an arc across the burgundy ceramic; following his path, a line of light tinged with saffron yellow curved through the blank space. “Not randomly. And I have to die at the hands of an enemy. Illness—bleeding out—they don’t count unless they’re the direct and immediate result of an enemy’s ability. Once the number comes up, my aura… Crazy Slots leaves my body and finds the nearest viable embryo or zygote. Then, as that body grows, Crazy Slots releases my memories little by little until I am… more or less… myself, again.”

He ran into a incorporeal wall three-quarters of the way through the number. The last centimeter of the glowing line flickered uncertainly.

“… Not enough,” Kite said, shaking his head minutely. “It needs some other vow or condition.”

Ging hummed thoughtfully, tapping his foot. A millimeter at a time, the glowing line in Crazy Slots’ mouth backtracked. It wouldn’t take long before the number vanished entirely, its corresponding ability failing to fall into place.

“What would you do if,” Ging said, “the number came up and you didn’t die?”

The line’s steady dim paused.

“If that happened,” Kite said slowly, “my body would survive and the ability wouldn’t trigger. But the number would have to remain until it was used. So… Crazy Slots would essentially be useless until an enemy  _ did _ kill me.”

“Could you just throw yourself in front of a train?” Ging questioned. “Do you need to die  _ in battle _ or simply  _ violently _ ?”

“The entire point is  _ not _ to die, master, why would I—?”

“I’m just covering all the bases. Well?”

“… In battle,” Kite clarified. “Hence ‘at the hands of an enemy’.”

“Does it count as a battle if you can’t even really fight back?”

Kite frowned and Ging held up his hands in a shrug. “More to the point, is that enough of a restriction that you’d be able to do the technique at all?”

With more than a little effort, Kite focused on pulling the line of light up to where his finger rested again. “You… think it would be better to have a steeper consequence?”

“If you can’t fight, what kind of life could you lead as a Hunter anyway? That’s all I’m saying.”

Ging refolded his arms in a familiar motion that Kite recognized to mean he wouldn’t be explaining further. Crazy Slots managed to give an annoyed click.

“A steeper consequence,” Kite said again. “So if… the enemy or enemies I am fighting when the number comes up disengages without killing me, and the ability isn’t used, I… simply don’t have access to Crazy Slots anymore? Ever?”

Ging snapped his fingers and pointed to the ceiling, a wordless motion of approval. Kite suppressed an exhausted sigh and looked back to the saffron shine beneath his finger. When he slid said finger forward, the line continued without wavering.

“Looks like that works,” he muttered.

When he reached the beginning of the line again, connecting it in an oval, the light flared up once and sunk down into a glimmer. Second by second, it diffused to touch an invisible outline forming it into a plain, blocky zero spanning most of Crazy Slots’ gaping mouth.

Halfway between invisible and opaque, the zero’s formation stopped.

“Master,” Kite said quietly, “if I do this, does it make me a selfish person?”

The translucent zero faded slightly. Ging regarded it, his face unreadable.

“Yes,” he said. Kite closed his eyes. “That’s how people get stronger. Selfishness and ambition are the same thing. Everything anyone has is something that could have belonged to someone else. All that matters is how much stronger your desire is than everyone else’s. There has never been a Hunter who wasn’t selfish at heart.”

“This isn’t what I wanted,” Kite said, his head dropping until his forehead was pressed to the question mark on Crazy Slots’ conical hat. “This isn’t what I want, master…”

He only moved when Ging’s hands gently took his, drawing them down with Crazy Slots still cupped between them so that he could lean forward into Kite’s line of sight.

“If that were true,” he said, “you wouldn’t have been able to even begin developing this ability.”

   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 

\--

 

There could be no doubt that when Ging set out to create something amazing, he succeeded.

Greed Island was a singularly beautiful place, both in landscape and in terms of what was necessary to maintain it. The fact that an island-wide game could be kept going at all hours of the day, for years on end, was nothing short of incredible—to say nothing of how many varieties of cards there were and how specific the conditions for collecting them were.

“Someday,” Ging told him, twirling a Giant Cyclops card between his fingers, “my son will come to this island. I’m sure of it.”

Kite, cradling a soothed and docile Remote Control Rat in his upturned hat, waited for him to continue. Ging only rarely mentioned Gon, but when he did it was always with a fierce, prideful fire in his eyes.

“And he’ll win the game,” Ging went on. He turned and smiled brilliantly at Kite. “When that happens, if he’s not piggybacking on his friends that’s when he’ll use the Magnetic Force card to come find me. If he’s using Accompany, though—I’ll send him to you, Kite.”

Kite stopped mid-stroke on the Rat’s back. “To me?”

“Yeah. So you can whip him into shape a bit.” Ging ruffled a hand through Kite’s hair. “I wouldn’t trust anyone else to do it.”

“Oh,” Kite said, blinking hard. It had been a long, long time since he’d been happy enough to tear up. It was nice. “Thank you. I… I’d be honored.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Ging muttered, not without fondness.

Kite basked in that feeling of contentment for a full twenty-four hours before he allowed himself to considering the implications of Ging’s plan.

   
   
 

Far out into a lush, grassy plain where the distant lights of the city couldn’t obscure the blanket of stars above their heads, Ging and Kite sat by the dying embers of their small campfire.

“Kite,” Ging said, prodding the scarlet coals with a branch so that they flared gold with sparks. “Over the past couple of years, you’ve really grown a lot. As a Hunter, as well as vertically.”

He cast Kite a lopsided grin, his face only just illuminated enough to be visible. “I think it’s about time you left the nest, hmm?”

A brief silence fell.

“I suppose,” Kite said. “If you say so.”

“I have a proposal, then.” When Ging lifted the branch, its tip was smoldering and smoked, casting a thin, translucent veil between them. “A final exam, so to speak.”

   
   
 

Ging was not good at goodbyes. This was something obvious to anyone who spent long enough around him to make an emotional goodbye at all necessary. As such, Kite knew without doubt how things were going to play out. They continued to explore Greed Island, collecting cards without any true intention of completing the game. As ever, Ging was good at acting as though nothing had changed and no tension was building.

It took several days before Kite physically could not stay awake any longer.

As expected, when he woke he was alone again.


End file.
